AI-powered modernization: Unlocking growth, reducing risk, and empowering people

Despite evident market demands, companies often stay limited by legacy technology frameworks. The modernization process often encounters major obstacles, as C-suite executives voice valid worries about capital investments, complexity of implementation, continuity of operations, and managing organizational change. Accumulated technical debt, evident in legacy infrastructure architecture and legacy code, can lead to inefficiencies that redirect essential resources away from strategic innovation efforts. McKinsey estimates that technical debt can account for 20-40% of IT budgets and significantly slow the pace of development. This opportunity cost significantly affects competitive positioning and shareholder value generation in a progressively digitally-oriented market.

AWS Transform stands out as a facilitator in this area providing a groundbreaking approach to updating legacy infrastructure utilizing agentic AI to examine and refactor legacy applications across .NET and mainframe platforms. This aids the transition from expensive, rigid legacy systems to secure, scalable cloud solutions, enhancing operational efficiency and fostering new opportunities for innovation and market adaptability.

Maintaining legacy infrastructure poses risks to the business. Legacy technology drains budgets, compromises security, and limits agility. In an environment, where cloud native competitors can scale globally in a short timeframe, companies clinging to legacy infrastructure may jeopardize their competitive advantage.

In simple terms, modernizing is now a necessity.

1. Unlocking growth: AI-powered modernization is a growth engine. The AWS comprehensive ecosystem aids agility, speed, and the ability to seize new opportunities. This strategic transformation allows organizations to:

• Advance product innovation: Leverage the Amazon SageMaker machine learning (ML) capabilities, the Amazon Bedrock generative AI solutions, and the AWS Transform modernization toolkit to expedite legacy application refactoring into scalable, containerized architectures.
• Achieve hyper-personalization: Deploy Amazon Personalize and Amazon Connect to deliver data-driven, personalized customer experiences at scale, driving increased customer retention metrics and lifetime value optimization.
• Approach new markets with assurance and ease: Utilize the AWS extensive global infrastructure of Regions and Availability Zones (AZs) to aid secure, AI-powered market expansion and dynamic demand response capabilities.

2. Reducing risk: Risk management continues to be a fundamental necessity for safeguarding value and ensuring sustainable growth. Legacy infrastructure naturally increases an organization's risk exposure, resulting in weaknesses in regulatory compliance and operational resilience. The AWS AI-powered modernization framework provides extensive risk reduction by:

• Enhancing security: Amazon GuardDuty, Amazon Detective, and AWS Security Hub offer AI-driven threat identification and anomaly surveillance.
• Guaranteeing compliance: AWS Audit Manager and AWS Config help streamline compliance documentation and regulatory consistency.
• Boosting resilience: Utilizing AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery along with AI-driven predictive monitoring through Amazon DevOps Guru, companies can quickly bounce back from disruptions, helping with continuity even in unforeseen situations.

3. Strengthening individuals: At the core of modernization are individuals. Frequently, legacy systems diminish workforce productivity through manual data reconciliation, legacy codebase maintenance, and repetitive process management. AWS AI services can change this dynamic.

By utilizing Amazon Q, AWS Lambda, and Amazon Textract to automate routine tasks, companies help employees concentrate on more valuable activities like data analysis, strategic development, and customer innovation. The benefits transcend productivity:

• Attract and retain top talent accustomed to working with cloud-native deployed applications that are modernized through AWS Transform.
• Build a culture of innovation with tools such as AWS Amplify and Amazon Bedrock that can enhance team experimentation.
• Improve engagement by helping employees see the connection between their routine activities and their outcomes made possible through AI-powered insights from Amazon Quick Sight.

Modernizing with AWS and AI isn’t just about keeping up, it’s about leading the way. Organizations executing comprehensive modernization initiatives demonstrate enhanced capabilities to:

• Foster customer-centric agility: Amazon Connect and AI-driven conversational interfaces can provide instant responses to changing market needs and customer expectations, potentially improving customer satisfaction scores and brand value.
• Accelerate innovation velocity: AWS Transform and Amazon Bedrock can shorten development timelines and improve market readiness, potentially creating lasting competitive advantages in fast-changing industries.
• Reach operational resilience: Leverage the AWS high-quality global infrastructure to establish strong business continuity frameworks, reducing operational risks while ensuring uninterrupted service delivery regardless of market conditions.

The transition from legacy systems to AI-powered platforms positions organizations dominate, not just compete, in today's economy.

In realizing modernization, the question for any executive in charge is no longer ‘if’ but ‘how.’ Through AWS, decision-makers can take the following steps to maximize the likelihood of success:

• Utilize AWS Migration Evaluator and AWS Transform to create persuasive ROI models and define measurable performance metrics.
• Facilitate cross-functional alignment among IT, finance, and operations via the AWS Well-Architected framework.
• Begin by refactoring key applications using AWS Transform, move supporting workloads with MGN and DMS, and then expand into AI integration with Amazon Q, Kiro, and Amazon Bedrock.
• Enhance internal competencies with AWS Skill Builder and AWS Training and Certification.
• Work together with AWS Partners via the AWS Partner Network to speed up adoption and minimize risk.

Modernization with AI on AWS is not simply about technology for technology's sake. It serves as a strategic catalyst for growth, resilience, and empowerment. Organizations that leverage AWS services today, from AWS Transform to Amazon Bedrock, are setting themselves up to be the leaders in the upcoming decade while those that delay may find themselves falling behind.