One of the most powerful, yet most overlooked, strategies in the race to modernise is also the simplest, retiring legacy systems.
Identifying and switching off applications that are obsolete, duplicated, or no longer delivering business value, and then properly decommissioning them, can save businesses from high unnecessary costs.
According to Gartner, IT spending in the banking and investment services market is forecast to reach US$1 trillion by 2028.
The cost of continuing with obsolete applications
For South African organisations already operating under constrained budgets and macroeconomic pressure, this is not a footnote it’s a crisis hiding in plain sight.
Financial institutions remain heavily dependent on legacy systems that consume a significant portion of their IT budgets, leaving them unable to deliver the innovation needed to remain competitive. The banking sector alone is a case study in deferred decommissioning gone wrong.
SA’s Innovation Problem
When a system is no longer earning its space, every day it stays running is money, a security risk, and innovation potential lost.
Developers with expertise in legacy systems are becoming increasingly hard to find, underscoring the tension organisations face in investing heavily in systems that are already marked for retirement. This challenge was highlighted by Keynote speaker, Poppy Tshabalala, a seasoned ICT leader, during the CIO South Africa Summit in Cape Town in April 2025
Simply pulling the plug is not retirement, it includes a plan for archiving data, replacing any needed workflows, and ensuring no teams are left stranded. The payoff being a simpler tech stack with fewer moving parts and less operational overhead.
In the broader 7Rs journey, retire is not a failure. It is a decision made by organisations mature enough to know that carrying dead weight is not loyalty it’s liability.
South African organisations striving for digital transformation, AI readiness, and lasting competitiveness cannot afford to delay this conversation. The first step to building something better is the courage to let go of what no longer works. Contact Developmenthub for advice on the next step in your digital transformation.