Modernising your business infrastructure costs money, but not as much as your legacy tech would end up costing. Let us count the reasons why…
When your organisation has used the same tech stack of systems, servers and software for years, it can be a hard habit to break. “There’s a comfort to it,” says esynergy’s Rishi Sharma. “The tech might be slow, it might be cumbersome, but it works.”
These technological comfort blankets are extremely popular among giant organisations. According to Dell, more than 70% of software used by Fortune 5000 companies was developed 20 or more years ago.
There’s more to the appeal of old tech than familiarity, of course. Migrating to a whole new digital architecture costs money, and may threaten a long-standing company culture. “Organisations will say, we’ve always done it this way, what’s the point in changing?” says Sharma. “And they’ll want to know where the budget’s coming from, and how soon they’ll see cost savings.” Businesses may be forgiven for deciding that it’s easier to stick with what they’ve got.
But it’s not really easier, and nor is it cheaper. Modernising may be the kind of prospect that keeps CFOs awake at night, but the costs of sticking with a legacy monolith are much higher, especially over time; they’re just less upfront and obvious. Let’s take a closer look at the price of lingering in your technological comfort zone.