At the same time, for several decades now, businesses have developed significant operational IT systems, going further and deeper in features supporting their business and vertical sector. This means the legacy is way more important than it was years ago, and it is most of the time increasing. A recent study by Gartner showed that what they call the “IT Debt” is growing at a worrying rate.
In all businesses, there is a high pressure to lower costs, while providing new services to remain competitive in a more complex environment, and at the same time bearing the increasing legacy burden mentioned above, with its set of obsolescence constraints. Some systems even run totally unsupported which might become a critical issue that will force a reengineering at some stage.
For enterprises which need to maintain and improve the systems supporting their businesses, this is a quite unsolvable challenge, at least by keeping the same approach that was used in the past.