Legacy Modernisation Holding Back AI Adoption, GFT Report Finds

What happened

A report from GFT Technologies suggests that the rising cost of modernising legacy systems, combined with a lack of clear strategic direction, may be holding enterprises back from adopting artificial intelligence. CIO Dive, which covered the findings, placed the research within a wider concern that overdue modernisation is also raising security worries inside organisations.

The core finding is that ageing technology estates are slowing AI ambition. Organisations that have not yet updated their core systems face mounting costs to do so, and the report indicates that without a defined vision of what modernisation should achieve, those costs are harder to justify and to sequence.

The coverage available to us is a short summary of the report, so we have not drawn out methodology, sample details or detailed survey results. Readers who need those should consult the original report and CIO Dive's article.

Why it matters

For leaders in AI and digital transformation, the central implication is that AI readiness is largely a modernisation question. Models, data pipelines and automated workflows depend on systems that can supply clean data, connect to new services and be governed effectively. When the underlying estate is outdated, AI pilots tend to sit on fragile foundations, and the security concerns highlighted in the coverage become harder to contain.

For customers and employees, the stakes are practical. Service journeys built on legacy platforms change slowly, and any AI-enabled capability inherits the limits of the systems beneath it. Treating modernisation as a separate infrastructure budget, rather than as the enabling layer for service design, is likely to keep that gap open.

The Renascence take

Most readers will file this as a story about cost and security. We think the more important point is that the absence of a clear vision is the real bottleneck, and cost is the symptom. Organisations often fund modernisation as a technology project and then ask AI to justify it, when the sequence should run the other way.

Start from the service outcome a customer or employee actually needs, then modernise only the parts of the estate that block it. Modernisation funded without a named experience goal becomes a cost line that AI initiatives are expected to rescue. The organisations that move fastest on AI are likely to be those that have already decided which journeys must change first. Everyone else will keep paying for the old systems while waiting for a strategy to appear.