New Research Shows Legacy Prevails Over Agile | GBAF | GBAF

New Research Shows Legacy Prevails Over Agile | GBAF | GBAF

Editorial & Advertiser disclosure

Global Banking and Finance Review is an online platform offering news, analysis, and opinion on the latest trends, developments, and innovations in the banking and finance industry worldwide. The platform covers a diverse range of topics, including banking, insurance, investment, wealth management, fintech, and regulatory issues. The website publishes news, press releases, opinion and advertorials on various financial organizations, products and services which are commissioned from various Companies, Organizations, PR agencies, Bloggers etc. These commissioned articles are commercial in nature. This is not to be considered as financial advice and should be considered only for information purposes. It does not reflect the views or opinion of our website and is not to be considered an endorsement or a recommendation. We cannot guarantee the accuracy or applicability of any information provided with respect to your individual or personal circumstances. Please seek Professional advice from a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. We link to various third-party websites, affiliate sales networks, and to our advertising partners websites. When you view or click on certain links available on our articles, our partners may compensate us for displaying the content to you or make a purchase or fill a form. This will not incur any additional charges to you. To make things simpler for you to identity or distinguish advertised or sponsored articles or links, you may consider all articles or links hosted on our site as a commercial article placement. We will not be responsible for any loss you may suffer as a result of any omission or inaccuracy on the website.

Home > Top Stories > Software Intelligence Report: Legacy and Agile Threaten Digital Transformation Success

Software Intelligence Report: Legacy and Agile Threaten Digital Transformation Success

Published by Gbaf News

Posted on June 21, 2018

4 min read

Last updated: January 21, 2026

UK finance minister Rachel Reeves discusses economic growth plans - Global Banking & Finance Review — Featured image of UK finance minister Rachel Reeves presenting her plans to boost economic growth through infrastructure reforms and Heathrow expansion. Key initiatives discussed include easing planning laws and supporting the Oxford-Cambridge corridor.

New research from CAST shows that legacy prevails; Agile is not the silver bullet it was promised to be

New York – CAST, the leader in Software Intelligence, today announced new research evaluating the impact of application age on software performance and business outcomes. The Software Intelligence Report on Application Age identifies two primary outcomes of old vs. new software that’s still in use today:

Older applications are far more likely to impact service continuity in the event of a production failure. Over 75% of applications from the 1980’s have a critical impact on business operations if they go down, compared to just under 50% of those written in this decade.
The shift toward Agile development teams might not be helping organizations modernize as quickly as the industry anticipated. According to the report, Software Agility is the only health factor that does not show a continuous improvement trend over time. In fact, applications released over the past 10 years score lower than applications released in the 1980s.

“Enterprise applications are often laden with software risk, as different pieces of functionality have been tacked-on over time. Without adequate Software Intelligence, it is very difficult for executives to get an accurate assessment of resilience and agility risk,” said Michael Muller, Product Owner for CAST Highlight and co-author of the report. “Smaller development teams and faster release cycles improve immediate outcomes for end-users, but without active portfolio-level management Agile teams can turn the codebase into a legacy headache for the next CIO.”

“IT still struggles to transform an aging, monolithic app-centric environment into a nimble, outcome-driven engine needed to drive digital business,” said Dan Hebda, Chief Strategy Officer at MEGA, who also contributed to the report. “In MEGA’s experience, those most successful in modernizing their infrastructure start with IT portfolio management to establish a baseline of Software Intelligence. This includes aligning resources to business outcomes, reducing infrastructure complexity, understanding technical debt and opening the road to accelerated innovation and growth.”

The Software Intelligence Report on Application Age looks at 2,067 applications, representing 733 million lines of code from 14 different technologies that are developed and maintained by more than 12,000 people across multiple verticals. To conduct the analysis, these applications were anonymized and scanned by CAST Highlight, the company’s SaaS-based application portfolio analysis solution.

To get your complimentary copy of the report, you can download it here.

New research from CAST shows that legacy prevails; Agile is not the silver bullet it was promised to be

New York – CAST, the leader in Software Intelligence, today announced new research evaluating the impact of application age on software performance and business outcomes. The Software Intelligence Report on Application Age identifies two primary outcomes of old vs. new software that’s still in use today:

Older applications are far more likely to impact service continuity in the event of a production failure. Over 75% of applications from the 1980’s have a critical impact on business operations if they go down, compared to just under 50% of those written in this decade.
The shift toward Agile development teams might not be helping organizations modernize as quickly as the industry anticipated. According to the report, Software Agility is the only health factor that does not show a continuous improvement trend over time. In fact, applications released over the past 10 years score lower than applications released in the 1980s.

“Enterprise applications are often laden with software risk, as different pieces of functionality have been tacked-on over time. Without adequate Software Intelligence, it is very difficult for executives to get an accurate assessment of resilience and agility risk,” said Michael Muller, Product Owner for CAST Highlight and co-author of the report. “Smaller development teams and faster release cycles improve immediate outcomes for end-users, but without active portfolio-level management Agile teams can turn the codebase into a legacy headache for the next CIO.”

“IT still struggles to transform an aging, monolithic app-centric environment into a nimble, outcome-driven engine needed to drive digital business,” said Dan Hebda, Chief Strategy Officer at MEGA, who also contributed to the report. “In MEGA’s experience, those most successful in modernizing their infrastructure start with IT portfolio management to establish a baseline of Software Intelligence. This includes aligning resources to business outcomes, reducing infrastructure complexity, understanding technical debt and opening the road to accelerated innovation and growth.”

The Software Intelligence Report on Application Age looks at 2,067 applications, representing 733 million lines of code from 14 different technologies that are developed and maintained by more than 12,000 people across multiple verticals. To conduct the analysis, these applications were anonymized and scanned by CAST Highlight, the company’s SaaS-based application portfolio analysis solution.

To get your complimentary copy of the report, you can download it here.