Why legacy blocks your agility (and why you can't keep waiting)

Integration projects that drag on endlessly, people who leave and take knowledge with them, platforms that haven't really been developed further in ten years. And meanwhile, the market is changing faster than ever. The harshest reality of legacy isn't that it's old, but that it slowly but surely strangles your ability to change.

The creeping standstill

Legacy never starts as a disaster. It starts small: a delay here, an extra test there, a specialist you need for five different teams. And then comes the point where nobody remembers it could also be different.

The technical layer creates so much overhead that you barely get around to real improvement. That's exactly how legacy works: it sucks up energy. Instead of building new opportunities, you're busy keeping old foundations upright.

And in the meanwhile, you watch the backlog grow. Not because teams don't want to, but because they can't do it otherwise.

Six months for one API connection? That's not a process. That's an alarm signal.

Skills disappear, risks pile up

Many organizations still run on platforms whose original administrators are now almost retiring. New specialists are scarce. Education no longer trains these profiles. The market is moving on to cloud-native tooling, but internally you're stuck on technology whose documentation still comes from the "clicking in folders" era.

The consequence? One departure, one illness, one reorganization... and the integration layer comes to a standstill. That's not just inefficient. It's quite risky.

Integrations that take months? That's just weird.

In practice, integrations always need to be adjusted. With legacy, that causes delays. With a modern iPaaS, you do it in minutes.

And yet "delay" has become the norm at many organizations. Integrations get pushed to the next quarter. Business features are left waiting. Market opportunities pass by. The organization ends up in a split: wanting to change, but unable to deliver.

Underestimation of what modern iPaaS can offer

Many companies still think iPaaS is just an integration layer. But that's a huge understatement. Modern platforms are lightning fast, easy to use, and take away a large part of the repetitive complexity.

Instead of an army of consultants, you have one team that learns while building within a day. Time-to-value shifts from quarters to days.

The brake on innovation

Legacy isn't just a technical problem. It's an innovation problem. A six-month integration project means:

• Six months in which you don't seize market opportunities
• Six months in which you don't implement process improvements
• Six months in which competitors keep building

And the biggest paradox? Companies with legacy often have the greatest need to innovate, but the least room to do so.

The failure example: when modernizing too late costs you dearly

You saw it at the now-bankrupt Carpetright: years of deferred maintenance, a failed ERP implementation, integrations that didn't move along. When the market tipped, the company tipped with it. But in the wrong direction.

IT isn't the only cause of their bankruptcy, but it did prove to be a structural weakness. And that's the lesson you can learn: standing still is more expensive than change.

The market moves on, why haven't you?

Gartner predicts the iPaaS market will grow to $17 billion by 2028. Not because it's trendy, but because organizations no longer have an alternative. Cloud-native has become the standard.

Organizations that accelerate now are building a foundation that does move along. Organizations that stay stuck are building further on quicksand. And that brings us to the questions every organization must ask itself: How long can you keep this up? And what does it cost you if you don't move now?

Want to know how you can get out of this legacy mud? Download our whitepaper [insert link] and discover the route.

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