According to new research from CAST, Software Intelligence expert, CIOs are struggling to understand legacy architecture, reduce software maintenance and fix costs, ultimately pointing to slow progress in digitising operations.

The research, dubbed the ‘Software Intelligence Report’ evaluates the priorities of IT leaders in digital transformation, with a survey of 500 professionals, including CIOs, software architects and application owners, regarding their ability to meet digital business objectives based on the overall health of their software.

“What our research found is that enterprise IT still relies heavily on complex legacy software, and the data IT is trying to protect remains buried underneath layers and layers of legacy,” said Lev Lesokhin, EVP of Strategy and Analytics, CAST.

“Teams lack transparency and understanding into software architecture, making it hard to digitally transform. This is a big area where Software Intelligence can help close that knowledge gap and help teams act with confidence and speed.”

Key findings from the report include:

• More than half of IT teams are running 25% of their applications on complex legacy technology stacks that very few understand.
• IT teams are spending at least 50% of their time on software maintenance, cutting into their efforts to modernise.
• 70% of CIOs report their teams spend more than half their time finding the cause before they’re able to fix system problems.
• 45% of IT organisations lack sufficient full-stack developer skills.
• Only 30% of CIOs make build, buy and retire decisions with input from their software architects.

“To remain effective, CIOs must build digital transformation roadmaps based on facts, not perceptions,” said Cristina Alvarez, former CIO of Telefónica.

“Transforming business-critical applications is no longer a nice to have, like having milk with your coffee. It’s essential for CIOs to transform the core of IT to support business objectives.”

“This can only be done with the kind of Software Intelligence that delivers an objective view of software assets, including its efficiency, security and robustness, to show how effective an existing portfolio will be at supporting modernisation efforts.”