FEATURE
“ The next stage of modernisation must therefore address the application and process layer, including APIs, data, workflows, user experiences and, increasingly, AI. The distinction is straightforward: cloud modernises where an application runs, while application modernisation changes how quickly the business can evolve.”
Kaippada agrees that simply transferring existing workloads can carry old problems into a new environment.
“ Moving to the cloud with the same workload translates into applications with coupled dependencies, technical debt, and monolithic architecture that existed earlier. It is crucial for CIOs to assess the applications first to determine the data, integrations, architecture, development process, and OS in use.”
This becomes even more important as enterprises adopt hybrid environments while navigating security, sovereignty and compliance requirements.
AI enters the modernisation engine
While AI is increasing pressure to modernise applications, it is also emerging as a tool for accelerating the process itself.
For Khachfeh, one of the biggest opportunities is understanding poorly documented legacy systems.
“ The toughest challenge is to know what a legacy system does, with little documentation and a lack of users who remember the system. AI can now analyze large codebases, map dependencies, extract the business rules and write the documentation in days rather than months. In refactoring, it converts old code to modern frameworks and suggests better designs. In testing, it generates test cases and data, giving far wider coverage and more confidence before go-live.”
Agentic AI could push this further by independently carrying out multi-step modernisation tasks, although Khachfeh stresses that human oversight remains essential.
“ Agentic AI takes this further by running multistep tasks on its own, with engineers reviewing and approving the results. But controls are essential. Keep sensitive code and data inside approved, secure environments, set clear boundaries on what AI is allowed to change, and keep engineers accountable for every decision that reaches production. Used well, AI can cut modernisation timelines significantly while reducing risk, not increasing it.”
The modernisation challenge is therefore becoming increasingly intertwined with AI. Enterprises need modern applications and accessible, governed data to exploit AI effectively, while AI itself offers new ways to understand and transform the legacy estates holding them back. •
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INTELLIGENT CIO MIDDLE EAST www. intelligentcio. com