The Fundamentals of Technical Debt
As companies struggle to keep pace with the growing demand for new software solutions that meet rapidly changing business needs, IT teams are under immense pressure to accelerate development. Yet, the everyday challenges IT experiences with managing fragmented systems, technical debt, and SaaS (software as a service) sprawl make it nearly impossible to deliver innovative apps as fast as the business demands.
If a fragmented tech stack is holding your team back, it’s time to consider what application consolidation and modernization can do for you. Let’s explore the costs and challenges of disconnected systems, how consolidation can reduce tech debt and supercharge application development speed, and ways low-code can help.
The hidden cost of fragmented tech stacks
Many IT teams have come to rely on fragmented tech stacks—a mix of disparate tools and systems—as a way to quickly solve problems or needs. But over time, these "quick" solutions have accumulated hidden costs. According to the Consortium for Information and Software Quality (CISQ), the estimated cost of accumulated software tech debt grew to $1.52 trillion as of 2022—and that’s just in the U.S.
More systems, more problems, slower workflows
Today’s convoluted IT landscapes are plagued with fragmented, and often antiquated, systems—hundreds of them. In fact, IDC predicts that by 2027, 53% of enterprises in the U.S. will have 500 or more applications.
Along with being tasked to manage and optimize their organization’s entire tech stack, IT teams are also drowning in their own toolsets, spending at least 7 hours a week dealing with complex tools and switching between systems. According to a report from Gartner, 72% of organizations use between five and 35 toolchains as part of their DevOps initiatives, and an additional 7% use a staggering 51 to 100 tools.
The promise of these productivity tools has always been to help IT teams build better software faster. Yet, too many tools create the opposite effect. In fact, inefficient workflows and unreliable software were cited as top contributors to developer burnout according to a study from Haystack.
Developers lose time on workarounds
Rather than focusing on high-value tasks, developers are spending a significant amount of time building custom workarounds to make fragmented systems "play nice" with one another. The process of integrating disparate platforms can lead to complex coding, debugging, and constant maintenance. As a result, some IT teams are spending up to 42% of their time on system maintenance. It’s no wonder innovation has taken a backseat.
Every integration adds risk
While integrating systems may seem like a simple solution, each brings added challenges. Every integration introduces potential failure points and security vulnerabilities, making the entire tech stack more fragile. One failure in an integration can ripple across multiple systems, often breaking workflows and even causing downtime. To put it in perspective, the average application has 110 third-party integrations, which requires updates anytime the third party modifies their technology. This means that IT teams are likely managing hundreds of integrations that need ongoing monitoring and testing to ensure their day-to-day processes are running smoothly.
Application consolidation: A catalyst to accelerate development
By consolidating applications, you’ll eliminate the complexity of navigating and managing disparate systems to ultimately accelerate your IT team’s speed and agility. Let’s further explore how tech consolidation can help your IT team simplify and streamline:
Reduce the complexities of managing multiple systems
With the right consolidation strategy, you’ll have fewer tools that offer more of what your IT team needs, empowering them to take advantage of tech’s benefits without the complexity. This means less time switching between systems and less time spent on troubleshooting and maintenance.
Reduce manual effort with pre-built components and automation
By consolidating your apps into fewer integrated systems that offer pre-built components, you can leverage ready-made solutions without the need to manually connect or configure individual components. Additionally, built-in automation can streamline development workflows, including SDLC tasks like deployment, maintenance, and monitoring, enabling your IT team to spend more time on strategic, high-value work.
Reduce tech debt by modernizing with a platform approach
Consolidating applications and modernizing your infrastructure with a platform approach allows you to minimize tech debt and streamline future updates and scaling. This leads to fewer manual interventions, lower maintenance costs, and less risk of system failures. And without the burden of technical debt, your IT team can finally refocus their efforts on innovation and accelerate software development to meet business needs.
Accelerate development with low-code
To implement an application consolidation and modernization strategy, many IT leaders are turning to the power of low-code. Low-code platforms enable rapid application development and modernization, offering teams visual drag-and-drop environments, reusable components, and pre-built connectors. By coupling the simplicity of low-code with the power of AI and generative AI, IT teams can benefit from AI-driven automation and guidance and transform the entire SDLC, enabling faster application development speed.
Plus, modern AI-powered low-code platforms provide everything you need to produce mission-critical applications at scale, whether it’s customer-facing or built to improve the employee experience. Therefore, you won’t need to rely on as many point solutions to get the job done.
Just take it from Banco Generali, which leveraged a low-code platform to modernize and consolidate its disparate legacy software as part of a company-wide innovation strategy. With this effort, they were able to significantly accelerate software development, slashing dev cycles by 30-40%. In addition, the bank has seen a 50% increase in operational efficiency thanks to new internal solutions and the consolidation of disparate apps.
"The combination of low-code and the capabilities that OutSystems provides for us were the best solution to have an easy tool to develop [modern] processes for our internal users." —Andrea Papaleo, Head of Business Process Automation, Banca Generali.
Hear more from Andrea Papaleo in the Banca Generali video.
What’s next? Audit and accelerate application development
If fragmented systems are holding your IT team back, it’s time to audit your tech stack, consolidate, and modernize—and the right low-code platform can help you do it faster, easier, and at scale. With low-code, you can simplify your IT landscape, reduce tech debt, increase agility, and accelerate development like never before. Seriously! At OutSystems, our modern low-code app dev platform gives you the tools you need to speed up development by up to 10x, meet even the most complex requirements, and do it all with your current resources—no additional headcount or skills required.
Ready to eliminate complexity and accelerate development? Sign up for a free trial or request a demo here.
