Legacy architectures have supported businesses for decades, but today, they’ve become a burden. In the 2000s, businesses ran on monolithic systems: PL/I, Cobol, ABAP, Delphi, C++ on-prem servers, with familiar engineers always on-site. It was the norm. But times have changed.
Since 2012, SaaS solutions have vividly replaced the previous approach. After 2013, mobility became essential. The pandemic and new regulations revealed one truth: businesses need to be flexible, distributed, and mobile. Legacy systems are no longer an option for modern businesses.
But there are several challenges of legacy system integration with cloud. So, every attempt to modernize may feel like rewriting everything from scratch. And worst of all, full dependency on a single cloud provider puts your business in a highly vulnerable position.
So, how can your business break free from these constraints, modernize without risk, and unlock true agility? Your business needs a clear legacy solution migration plan for enterprises — a step-by-step approach that enables transformation without compromising performance or continuity. Let’s explore why legacy systems hold you back and how to build a cloud-neutral solution for SMB that powers growth.
Real business risks of sticking with legacy systems
When your company becomes deeply tied to a single provider, switching to another can quickly turn into a costly and complex nightmare. That’s especially challenging if you’re dealing with legacy monolithic systems that have thousands of lines of code. In healthcare, fintech, entertainment tech, or law enforcement systems, these limitations can lead to operational, legal, or financial risks.
Here are the key business risks you face when relying on outdated legacy architectures:
- Slow adoption of new tools and platforms. Monolithic systems tightly couple all components, frontend and backend, into one block, making migration costly and complex.
- Regulatory compliance limitations. Being tied to a single vendor can restrict your ability to comply with evolving legal requirements, especially in regulated industries
- Security and operational risks. In security-critical sectors such as police tech or entertainment systems, limited infrastructure control can lead to breaches, loss of trust, or downtime.
- Lack of scalability. Outdated architectures don’t scale efficiently and are incompatible with modern APIs, mobile applications, reporting platforms, or analytics tools.
- High maintenance costs. Skilled specialists for legacy languages like Delphi, Cobol, or PL/I are rare and expensive, increasing your technical debt and operational costs.
What cloud architecture gives your business
Unlike legacy systems that slow you down, cloud agnostic microservices architecture is designed for speed, scale, and adaptability. This tech upgrade offers a strategic shift. As a result, you empower your business to respond faster, innovate more freely, and stay resilient in a constantly changing environment.
What your business can gain with a cloud-first approach:
- Mobility. Access data and processes from anywhere, empowering remote and distributed teams.
- Enhanced security. Protect your data around the clock, knowing it’s secure both when stored and when moving. Real-time threat monitoring also helps catch risks before they become problems.
- Flexibility. Run your code anywhere without costly rewrites, supporting multi-cloud strategies.
- AI + cloud. Combine artificial intelligence with cloud scalability to achieve speed, cost-efficiency, and handle load peaks seamlessly. This is crucial in healthcare or real-time trading.
- Optimization. A single cloud function can replace multiple full-time employees by automating routine tasks.
- Freedom of choice. Mix and match services from multiple providers, avoiding vendor lock-in and increasing resilience.
In entertainment and police tech, legacy systems that rely on ASM (Assembly Language) can greatly benefit from applications that self-adapt to different infrastructures. Such code is cloud-agnostic, which is able to determine and optimize execution whether on Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, or on-premise.
7 ways to modernize legacy systems without the risk of vendor lock-in
- Encapsulation. Create an abstraction layer between your code and cloud services. Only a small part interacts directly with providers, while the rest uses a universal interface. This makes switching providers easier without rewriting everything.
- Dependency injection. Design code to depend on interfaces rather than concrete implementations. Providers can be injected dynamically, improving flexibility, simplifying testing, and enabling smoother scaling.
- Gradual transition. Don’t rewrite everything at once. Start by migrating key functions or modules to the cloud, reducing risk and enabling iterative improvements.
- Refactoring. Migrate codebases to modern languages and frameworks compatible with cloud-native stacks, such as Node.js, Python, or .NET.
- Cloud-native functions. Rebuild inspanidual features as serverless functions accessible via URLs, improving scalability and cost efficiency.
- API-first approach. Ensure every new service is designed with APIs from the ground up, enabling easier integration and future flexibility.
- AI optimization. Automate repetitive manual tasks with AI-driven workflows to boost productivity and reduce human error.
How NetLS helps clients avoid legacy system dependency
Are your systems hard to scale, complex to integrate with modern services, and switching to another cloud provider feels like a technical apocalypse? We’ve seen this so many times.
At NetLS, we combine our experience and the best digital transformation practices to turn legacy into a growth engine, without stress, vendor lock-in, and with real business value. We guide enterprises in transitioning from monolithic legacy systems to cloud-agnostic microservice platforms.
We’ve supported fintech, telecom, law enforcement, and other industries by implementing flexible architectures that reduce dependency on single vendors and reduce business operational costs.
Our technology consulting services can help you make the cloud work for your business. Our team will:
- Define the most effective cloud strategy tailored to your business goals
- Build a step-by-step legacy software modernization roadmap to reduce the risks of vendor lock-in
- Design and deliver a cloud-native solution that fits your needs
How code refactoring helped our client stay flexible and get the best from multiple cloud platforms
In this app migration to cloud case, our dedicated development team performed a code refactoring project to enable more efficient functional scaling during cloud provider transitions (Azure, AWS, dedicated servers). This involved creating a migration plan and modernization roadmap for enterprise legacy solutions, enabling a cloud-agnostic microservices architecture. The result:
- Reduced vendor dependency. Build architecture that minimizes lock-in and gives you freedom to switch providers.
- Optimized costs. Lower spending on infrastructure, deployment, and maintenance through a pay-as-you-go model. This approach eliminates the need for upfront capital investments, minimizes ongoing support costs, and allows for flexible scaling based on actual business needs.
- Flexible architecture. Be ready for rapid scaling, entering new markets, M&A activity, or pivoting your business focus.
- Accelerated time-to-market. Launch new features faster with fewer delays caused by legacy tech debt.
- Increased resilience. Build systems that don’t break under pressure — whether from traffic surges or internal changes.
- Lower operational costs. Cloud platforms typically charge only for actual resource usage, helping you save on equipment and power consumption.
- Stronger security. Leading cloud providers invest heavily in protecting data, helping you safeguard business-critical information more effectively.
- No need to manage infrastructure. Another company takes full responsibility for infrastructure maintenance, support, and security — freeing you from those burdens.
- Scalability. Easily scale applications to match business growth without overhauling the system.
- Faster scaling to meet traffic demands. Respond quickly to usage spikes without performance issues.
Curious how modernizing your legacy systems can boost your business growth without the headaches? Discover real cloud transition cases from our clients in our portfolio, and see how your business can thrive in the cloud era!
Yuliia Suprunenko