Modernising Your IT Portfolio Without Losing Your Sanity

The uncomfortable truth about IT portfolios?

They age like milk, not wine.

You can keep adding “new and shiny” technologies, but the quiet, older components are still there, quietly becoming liabilities. The art of modernisation is finding the balance between innovation and the messy reality of legacy systems that still run critical parts of the business.

Just like changing the oil in your car, portfolio modernisation is easy to delay, but costly if ignored. And while the benefits may not be instant, the risks of inaction grow over time.

Here’s a clear roadmap for approaching modernisation in a way that’s strategic, not chaotic.

Step 1 - Know What You Have

It sounds simple, but many organisations don’t have a reliable, up-to-date view of their IT estate. The first job is creating a complete inventory, every application, its technology stack, the business functions it supports, and the dependencies it relies on. Without this, you’re flying blind.

Step 2 - Decide Each Asset’s Future

Not all systems are created equal. Each one falls into one of eight “dispositions”:

1. Extend – Invest to deliver more value.
2. Retain – Keep it running with minimal maintenance.
3. Update – Bring it close to the vendor’s current version.
4. Replace – Switch to a better commercial or custom alternative.
5. Modernise – Refactor to meet today’s engineering standards.
6. Replatform – Move to a more cost-effective environment without major changes.
7. Consolidate – Standardise and remove redundancy.
8. Retire – Archive and decommission.

Step 3 - Manage the Ripple Effects

Changing one application will inevitably impact others, especially with shared platforms and integrations. This is where most modernisation plans fail. They underestimate the knock-on effects.

Step 4 - Handle Integrations With Care

Integrations are often the weak link: fragile, custom-coded, and prone to breaking. Worse, different systems may define the same concepts differently (“customer” can mean a person, a company, or a household). When business models shift, these mismatches become even more painful.

Step 5 - Execute, Even if it Means Starting Over

Sometimes, the scale of obsolescence means that incremental fixes aren’t enough. It can be more cost-effective to replace large swathes of the stack with integrated enterprise suites like ERP or CRM rather than try to modernise everything piecemeal.

The takeaway?

Modernising your IT portfolio isn’t about chasing “modern” for its own sake. It’s about building a resilient, adaptable foundation that can support where your business is going, not just where it’s been.

Sans Souci helps organisations cut through complexity and modernise in the right order, with the right focus. Because sometimes, the best bad plan… is still the best plan you’ve got.

Get in touch.

If you’re wrestling with an ageing IT portfolio, unsure where to start, or whether to modernise, consolidate, or start again, I’ve helped leaders navigate those exact choices.

Every organisation’s context is different, but the principles are the same: clarity before action, and the right changes in the right order.

If you’d like to explore how this could work in your environment, let’s have a conversation.

Further Reading

If you’d like to explore IT portfolio modernisation in more depth, these resources offer valuable insights, practical frameworks, and real-world examples:

• Gartner – “Modernise Legacy Applications Without Disruption” Available via Gartner’s website or through your organisation’s subscription.
• Forrester – “Application Portfolio Rationalisation: Best Practices” Search for this report on Forrester’s portal to explore classification and rationalisation approaches.
• The Open Group – “Application Landscape and Application Portfolio Management” Found on The Open Group’s website or within TOGAF documentation, providing structured architectural guidance.
• IBM – “Rationalisation Strategy: Assess, Modernise, Replatform, Transform” Guides and frameworks available on IBM’s website for selecting the right modernisation approach.
• AWS & Azure – Cloud Migration Guides Practical step-by-step guidance on legacy migration and replatforming, available via AWS and Microsoft Azure documentation hubs.
• Microsoft Patterns & Practices – “Integration Patterns and Best Practices” Available on Microsoft’s documentation site or GitHub, covering integration strategies and pitfalls.