Legacy systems, while still forming the backbone of critical industries such as banking and financial services, healthcare and life sciences, and government, are quickly becoming relics of a bygone era. With the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), we stand at the cusp of a technological revolution—one where legacy modernization is not just feasible, but imperative for businesses to thrive.
The urgency of legacy modernization
Businesses that don’t modernize, face rising operational costs and increased downtime, costing the global economy billions annually.
If you think about the challenges businesses face with legacy systems, it’s similar to driving a 1980s car on today’s highways; efficiency, safety, and durability, are all concerns. This is the reality for companies still relying on systems built in COBOL, PL1, or Pascal. Though these systems were robust for their time, they are now slow, inefficient, and prone to security vulnerabilities.
Legacy modernization is critical to a successful digital transformation, but some businesses haven’t made significant progress yet. Ascendion’s EngineeringAI approach can help businesses tackle the complexities of legacy systems efficiently and effectively.
AI’s role in accelerating legacy modernization
AI is fundamentally transforming the way businesses approach legacy modernization. Ascendion’s vision of EngineeringAI permeates throughout our entire modernization strategy. Digital Ascender is our AI-powered engineering companion and part of our engineering platform, ASCENDION AVA+. Digital Ascender uses AI to reverse-engineer outdated code, providing comprehensive insights in just weeks—a stark contrast to traditional methods, which could take months or even years.
For example, with AI, we were able to reverse-engineer a 40-year-old system with over 700,000 lines of PL1 code in approximately three weeks. But this isn’t just a time-saver—it’s a breakthrough for businesses that need to comprehend the complexities of their legacy systems without sacrificing significant time or resources.
In addition, AI doesn’t just speed up code analysis, it assists in modernizing user interfaces (UI). For instance, using our Michelangelo studio within ASCENDION AVA+, we can generate UI prototypes from something as simple as a wireframe or user story. This drastically reduces design timelines, while maintaining the highest standards of quality.
However, AI isn’t flawless, as we still need to fine-tune AI for more complex UI and user experience (UX) tasks. While AI greatly enhances efficiency, human expertise remains crucial for addressing the more nuanced aspects of system design and integration.
Meeting client requirements and addressing industry trends
Today, businesses are increasingly demanding real-time data processing, enhanced security, and scalable cloud solutions. The need for modernization has never been more urgent.
Legacy systems in banks still handle trillions of dollars in transactions daily; one bank alone processes over $1 trillion in COBOL transactions every day, emphasizing the critical role of these systems. However, fewer and fewer developers are proficient in these outdated languages. While these systems remain integral to the operations of many institutions, they pose significant challenges in terms of scalability, integration, and maintenance.
AI can help bridge this skills gap. Traditionally, understanding and documenting legacy systems could take months of work, often requiring specialized knowledge that is in dwindling supply. With tools like Ascendion’s Digital Ascender and other AI-powered solutions, companies are now able to analyze, reverse-engineer and document legacy systems in a fraction of the time it once took.
Beyond speeding up the process, AI enables companies to bridge the skills gap by reducing their dependence on scarce legacy programming experts. Digital Ascender is designed to assist new employees in rapidly getting up to speed on older systems by automatically generating user stories, business documentation, and system architecture maps. Moreover, as AI continuously learns and builds context from analyzing code file by file, the accuracy of its output improves over time. This provides an additional layer of reliability, ensuring that critical systems remain operational while they are being transitioned or modernized.
The future of legacy systems
Looking forward, AI-driven modernization offers companies a clear path ahead to drastically reduce both the costs and time associated with updating legacy systems. Based on our estimates at Ascendion, leveraging AI can cut modernization timelines by up to 60% and boost developer productivity by as much as 40%. These improvements will not only save companies millions in operational costs, but also enable them to adopt future advancements like predictive maintenance and enhanced cybersecurity.
By integrating AI-driven cloud optimization tools, businesses can cut wasteful resource usage—an essential advantage in today’s cost-sensitive environment.
With the legacy modernization market projected to reach $32.8 billion by 2027, the time for action is now. Ascendion’s AI-driven platforms are empowering companies to lead in this transformation. Those that modernize will unlock efficiency and growth, while those that don’t will fall behind.
