IT modernisation is often essential, but rarely straightforward. Although the escalating risks and costs of ageing systems have elevated it to a board-level priority, Ensono’s State of IT Modernisation 2025 report found that only 21% of leaders believe their organisations are ‘ahead of the curve’ today. Most are either keeping pace with industry standards (58%), playing catch-up (16%) or even struggling to keep up (4%). So what’s standing in the way of success for these organisations?
Technical debt is one obvious answer. Years of patchwork fixes on ageing systems mean that IT teams are often too busy keeping the lights on to focus on innovation, with more than half of respondents surveyed for the report stating that their team-members spend most of their time maintaining day-to-day operations. Talent gaps, integration challenges and increasing vendor support costs only compound the problem.
To move beyond it and secure the funds they need, CIOs need to look beyond the technical arguments for modernisation, however, and focus instead on how it could be an engine for growth. Indeed, 73% of organisations that are ahead of the curve say their IT modernisation goals are closely aligned with business objectives, compared with 22% of those playing catch-up.
“The closer the CIO is to the actual business functions – the people who are driving more revenue for the company and retaining the revenue it has today – the more effective the strategy seems to be,” says Oliver Presland, SVP of the global consulting service portfolio and deputy MD for Europe at Ensono, a technology adviser and managed service provider.
The pragmatic approach
Ensono’s report reveals another clear trend that defines modernisation leaders: they are modernising incrementally. Presland says this reflects an evolution in thinking over the past few years. Initially, there was a widespread market-driven belief that apps could be shifted off legacy systems en masse with relative ease and minimal cost. Today, most CIOs know that this is rarely the case.
“Having spent a lot of time, effort and money, many organisations found that these projects didn’t pan out as they hoped,” Presland explains. “Those who watched some of their peers go through this have also benefited from that experience without the pain.”
Success will belong to those who can most effectively align modernisation with business outcomes
Some of these organisations have since focused on making the most of the capabilities of existing mainframes, for example, rather than attempting to move core systems and applications to alternative platforms. However, there are organisations at the other end of the spectrum that are still desperate to get off the mainframe altogether. “They’ve got a cloud-first mantra – that’s the past, we need to just get rid of it,” says Presland.
The majority of organisations now sit between these two extremes in hybrid environments. “They’ve got some applications and business functionalities that they know are better placed elsewhere, so they can evolve them and innovate customer experiences. But they’re also going to have some ongoing mainframe workload because it’s really critical – it holds 30 years of business transactions and the history of everything they’ve done with a customer.”
Both ends of the modernisation spectrum are also converging towards this pragmatic centre, with most leaders realising “there’s a balance to be struck,” says Presland. This is reflected in the report’s findings: 47% of respondents are taking a phased approach to modernisation, updating some applications and migrating others while keeping core systems intact.
Measuring success
Modernisation leaders are also likely to have a well-defined strategy to manage cloud costs and many have also leveraged AI to accelerate modernisation. Another interesting finding from the report is that UK organisations appear significantly further along their modernisation journeys than their US counterparts.
UK leaders are twice as likely to say they’re leading the way in modernisation (28% versus 14%), for example, which may be due to the fact that they’re more likely to have highly structured approaches to measurement, as well as that all-important alignment with business goals.
While many organisations are still working out how best to measure and track modernisation progress, “If you can tie the metrics directly to things the CFO cares about, clearly that’s very powerful,” says Presland. “Whether it’s ‘as a result of this, we managed to increase revenues’ or ‘we managed to open up a new line of business’ or ‘we managed to get to market faster’. All of these things have tangible top-line results.”
Modernisation leaders also know the value of collaboration with third-party experts. “This is critical,” says Presland. “Our report found that 95% of organisations are working with partners – often those who can provide not only consulting and advisory services, but who can also execute the change that’s needed.”
Partnering with an organisation like Ensono can help to close talent gaps and drive modernisation forward. It provides support for both legacy systems and cloud-native systems, offering a unique perspective on modernisation challenges and how best to overcome them. Its “blue collar-minded” associates act as a seamless extension of the internal team, says Presland, “rolling their sleeves up” and helping to execute and deliver strategies.
“If you don’t have the appetite or the time to develop talent in-house or to hire it in, being able to tap into the expertise of organisations that have potentially worked with your competitors, or even in different industries facing similar challenges, is a big accelerant,” he explains. “They can come in and catalyse refinement of the strategy, execution of the projects and delivery of the outcomes.”
No doubt the gap between modernisation leaders and laggards will increase in the future. Success will ultimately belong not to those with the most advanced technology, but to those who can most effectively align modernisation with business outcomes, measure progress with the right frameworks and execute winning strategies through collaboration with expert partners.
For more information please visit ensono.com/gb
IT modernisation is often essential, but rarely straightforward. Although the escalating risks and costs of ageing systems have elevated it to a board-level priority, Ensono’s State of IT Modernisation 2025 report found that only 21% of leaders believe their organisations are ‘ahead of the curve’ today. Most are either keeping pace with industry standards (58%), playing catch-up (16%) or even struggling to keep up (4%). So what’s standing in the way of success for these organisations?
Technical debt is one obvious answer. Years of patchwork fixes on ageing systems mean that IT teams are often too busy keeping the lights on to focus on innovation, with more than half of respondents surveyed for the report stating that their team-members spend most of their time maintaining day-to-day operations. Talent gaps, integration challenges and increasing vendor support costs only compound the problem.
To move beyond it and secure the funds they need, CIOs need to look beyond the technical arguments for modernisation, however, and focus instead on how it could be an engine for growth. Indeed, 73% of organisations that are ahead of the curve say their IT modernisation goals are closely aligned with business objectives, compared with 22% of those playing catch-up.
