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At a time when IT budgets are increasingly constrained, many CIOs are tempted to squeeze extra life out of systems that should have been put out to pasture years ago. For such CIOs, , workday human capital alliance lead at Deloitte, offers this simple advice: think twice.

“If you’re investing money in an IT system that’s limping along on a version that’s barely being supported by the solution vendor, it’s a good sign that the system might be killing your business,” Sundt says. “It’s even worse if you’re using a solution that’s no longer being supported.”

Could your enterprise benefit from a comprehensive IT system refresh? Here are eight signs that indicate your aging IT infrastructure has become a profitability boat anchor.

1. Frequent breakdowns

System breakdowns diminish business resiliency while causing disruptions that reduce customer trust, says , Deloitte’s cloud engineering offering leader. “This may contribute to lost productivity as business users wait for the system to be fixed so they can carry on with their work.”

At a minimum, periodic upgrades and patches to the tech stack or tech currency program should be considered, Tayal says. Additionally, organizations should have a disciplined process of root cause analysis in place, looking into every level-one severity incident that occurred within the past month. If an excessive number of issues are identified, it’s a tell-tale sign of an aging system. Additionally, to see whether their systems are performing adequately, organizations should conduct a broad assessment of their application portfolio every two years.

2. Degraded usability

A key indicator that outdated IT systems are hurting your business is a growing gap between expectations and experience.

“Once employees and customers have interacted with modern, seamless technology elsewhere, frustration with legacy systems becomes undeniable,” says , director of ServiceNow strategies at management consulting firm iTech AG.

“Downward satisfaction scores may reflect this trend by showing slow upgrades, prolonged integration timelines, and rising operation and maintenance costs that don’t scale,” he explains. “These are more than inefficiencies; they are now competitive liabilities.”

3. Poor information access

A business can’t measure and improve performance if decision-makers don’t have access to relevant and actionable information, much of which may be inaccessible in legacy systems, says , a partner at technology research and advisory firm ISG.

The solution is not always to bring existing systems up to date, Miears states. “Often, business and technology practices have been conditioned to accept the constraints of outdated technology, so going back to the fundamentals is often the best initial approach.”

Poor information access and other drawbacks created by an aging IT system tend to stifle enterprise growth and agility, keeping the business from meeting changing customer demands or entering new markets quickly and efficiently. “As a result, business processes may become disjointed and slow, characterized by too many hand-offs, disparate data sources, and manual stopgaps,” Miears says.

4. Multiplying work-arounds

If your team is constantly inventing work-arounds, that’s a big warning sign, says , chief product officer at cybersecurity solutions provider Security Compass. “If folks are using personal tools, creating side processes in Excel, or complaining that the system ‘just doesn’t do what we need,’ your technology is no longer helping — it’s getting in the way.”

Old, enfeebled systems slow everything down. “They’re harder to use and usually require more manual work. This leads to delays, frustrated team members, and missed opportunities,” Young warns.

Don’t wait until something breaks, Young advises. “Build regular updates, reviews, and upgrades into your roadmap,” he says. “Keep things modular and use tools that scale easily, such as cloud services.” Young also recommends keeping a constant eye on updates, patches, and overall system health. “It saves a ton of trouble later.”

5. Mounting cybersecurity concerns

Cyberthreats are constantly evolving, and outdated systems often lack the necessary security patches and , says , CEO of Kontra, a security training platform provider. “This leaves you vulnerable to breaches, which can result in significant financial losses, legal liabilities, and irreparable damage to your brand trust.”

Outdated technology is , warns , principal technology consultant at managed IT services firm XTIUM. “When systems age out of support, critical vulnerabilities go unaddressed and unpatched by their original application vendors,” he says.

Given the fact that elderly systems have existed for many years, their vulnerabilities and shortcomings are widely known to bad actors and can be easily targeted for exploitation. “Businesses using outdated technology may see continuous threats within their endpoint detection and response systems, or even see successful breaches and/or ransomware issues within their organization,” he says.

6. Collapsing productivity

Your workforce isn’t hitting key measurables, and internal deliverables are taking longer than expected. “This could be a result of outdated applications not performing to an acceptable standard, outdated hardware on which those applications are running, or even underlying data contained in old file formats that don’t perform optimally within the current generation of line-of-business or productivity applications,” Sullivan says.

Poor productivity inevitably leads to overburdened support teams. You may find that your organization isn’t aligning with industry-standard IT user ratios, Sullivan says. “This can be a sign that you’re losing investment in your IT team since, instead of spending time strategically focused on advancing business objectives, they’re routinely fighting fires, trying to keep aging client devices, software, servers, or network infrastructure running,” he warns. “The end result is always a losing proposition, since you’re sinking valuable IT human capital into trying to keep systems afloat, only to have their performance remain less than optimal due to their age.”

7. Rising maintenance costs

One of the clearest signs of an outdated system is rising IT maintenance costs, says , CEO of software development firm Dreamix. “If you’re consistently spending money keeping your systems from collapsing, rather than using that budget to automate or scale, this is a clear sign that your IT systems might need an update.”

Outdated IT systems create performance bottlenecks that eat into engineering time and delay service delivery, Mitov says. “Time gets lost to work-arounds and burdens teams with an infrastructure that isn’t built to handle the scale and speed current operations demand.”

8. Diminished capabilities

A key sign that outdated IT systems may be harming your business is when significant time is spent on manual tasks that could be automated with newer systems, says , principal architect at remote meeting services firm LoopUp. “This inefficiency not only burdens your users but also reduces overall productivity,” he adds.

Additionally, if critical system knowledge resides with only one or two long-term staff members, there’s a risk of creating knowledge silos. This can lead to operational disruptions if these key individuals suddenly become unavailable. “Detecting these warning signs early can help you take proactive steps needed to modernize your IT infrastructure and avoid potential negative impacts on your business.”

To expand and update system capabilities, Bennett recommends building a modernization plan incorporating a technology stack that aligns with current and anticipated business requirements. The plan should also take advantage of modern solutions, such as a cloud-first approach and AI integrations.

See also:

• 8 strategies for accelerating IT modernization
• Massive modernization: Tips for overhauling IT at scale