Skip to main content
Skip to footer

Radhey Shyam

Consulting Partner, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance, TCS

Selecting the right legacy modernization strategy is crucial to success

The legacy architecture of traditional banks is a constraint to thriving in the digital era. A roadblock to digital transformation in financial services, legacy architecture constrains banks from capitalizing on new opportunities, complying with regulatory demands, and competing with fintechs. Legacy modernization programs have thus emerged as an urgent need. Banks recognize the need for mainframe modernization but face challenges in application migration and lack clarity on the strategy. The way forward is to design a suitable platform modernization strategy with an agile, cloud-enabled application architecture, underpinned by micro-services and application programming interface (API) frameworks, and equipped with the capability to embrace artificial intelligence technologies. To achieve this, banks need to choose from three legacy modernization strategies:

  • Using third-party packages

  • Undertaking inhouse upgrades

  • Adopting a combination of third-party packages and inhouse upgrades