Finding IT professionals with the expertise to maintain business-critical legacy applications is becoming increasingly difficult. As experienced programmers in legacy languages retire, a widening skills gap emerges, leaving organizations struggling to support essential systems. Industries such as banking, insurance, and government, which have long depended on in-house mainframe or client/server applications, are feeling this shortage most acutely.
The Loss of Institutional Knowledge
As Baby Boomers retire, their institutional knowledge about maintaining and troubleshooting these systems leaves with them. When a software crash, security breach, or routine feature update arises, the shrinking pool of legacy system experts poses a significant risk to IT operations and business continuity.
Younger generations of developers, including Millennials and Gen Z, were never trained on mainframe systems, do not code in legacy programming languages, and generally have little interest in learning outdated technologies. They focus on modern tech trends, leaving legacy systems further neglected.
British Airways’ IT Meltdown: A Recent Example
A recent illustration of the challenges posed by legacy systems is British Airways’ global IT meltdown just this past December. The 95-minute outage left passengers unable to check in online and delayed flights, as pilots couldn’t process vital “load sheets,” causing aircraft to remain on the tarmac. The airline is currently investing £750 million in a three-year IT upgrade to prevent future incidents, aiming to shift its legacy data centers onto a more reliable cloud-based platform.
The Skills Gap Extends Beyond COBOL and the Mainframe
While COBOL is often cited as the poster child of legacy languages, the skills shortage affects many other aging programming languages that enterprises still rely on. These include:
- EGL
- PowerBuilder
- Smalltalk
- Assembler
- CA/Gen
- C/C++
- Ideal
- Natural
- Pascal/Delphi
- PL/I
- RPG
Many enterprises continue to rely on these languages, which are deeply embedded in their operations. For example, Fortran is still prevalent in scientific computing, weather forecasting, and engineering applications. Pascal and Delphi Object Pascal persist in niche commercial applications, while Smalltalk is used in some banks, insurance companies, and utilities.
Beyond the skills shortage, legacy systems introduce significant technical debt, making modernization efforts difficult. These outdated platforms hinder cloud integration, mobile app development, and the adoption of AI and Big Data solutions. Additionally, legacy code increases cybersecurity vulnerabilities, exposing businesses to potential breaches.
Addressing the Skills Gap
For organizations dependent on legacy systems, there are three primary approaches to mitigating the skills shortage: retaining legacy programmers, training new professionals, or modernizing technology.
1. Temporary Band-Aid: Retaining and Training
A short-term solution is to keep legacy programmers on board longer or incentivize younger professionals to learn legacy technologies. However, this approach requires financial incentives and comprehensive training programs. Some companies have launched apprenticeship initiatives, recruiting young IT talent and providing them with training in both legacy and modern technologies.
2. A Better Fix: Prioritizing Modernization
While training new programmers in old languages can temporarily plug the skills gap, it does not eliminate the risks associated with aging systems. Analysts widely recommend that enterprises invest in modernization. According to Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Andy Rowsell-Jones, IT departments spend up to 75% of their budgets maintaining legacy systems. Redirecting these resources toward modernization could foster innovation and business growth.
3. The Best Solution: Microservices Extraction for Rapid Modernization
A full-scale modernization effort can take years, but organizations need solutions now. A highly effective approach is microservices extraction, which allows businesses to modernize critical functions without overhauling entire systems. Unlike traditional modernization, which requires rewriting or replacing an entire application, microservices extraction identifies and migrates only essential business functions, eliminating redundant code and reducing risk.
Conclusion
Organizations still relying on legacy applications built with obsolete programming languages face mounting risks. These systems limit cloud and mobile capabilities, restrict advanced analytics and AI adoption, and present security vulnerabilities. Additionally, as skilled programmers retire and younger developers avoid outdated technologies, businesses struggle to maintain mission-critical applications.
The best way forward is modernization with microservices extraction, allowing enterprises to retain essential functionality while shedding technical debt. This approach accelerates digital transformation, optimizes IT resources, and minimizes business disruption, making it the superior solution for the legacy skills crisis.