Business transformative technology modernisation is no longer a career threatening move for CEOs

Major business transformative technology modernisation programmes, such as mainframe migration to the cloud, have been rightly regarded as extremely high risk. They are complex, multi-year and the financial benefits take years to emerge.

CEOs are under extreme pressure from Boards and shareholders to deliver financial results from Day 1 of their tenure and every day after that. According to the 2023 UK Spencer Stuart Board Index the average tenure of a CEO is 5.3 years, down from 5.4 years in 2021 and 5.8 years in 2022. Like all averages, these statistics obscure that many CEOs have a much shorter tenure.

So, if it is such a high-risk endeavour with the financial benefits more likely to appear to their successor, why should CEOs advocate such a career threatening move? Is it more in their interests to ensure regulatory obligations are achieved through incremental management of End of Service Life (EOSL) issues and ‘kick the can down the road’?

These were all valid questions in the past. Today, they are not. The advent of GenAI based modernisation, innovative cloud technology and agile based delivery techniques mean the risk of failure is greatly reduced. The ‘promised land’ of lower operating costs, greater agility and reduced workforce obsolescence risk delivered by business transformative technology modernisation is now more easily within reach. The safe bet for the CEO is to lean-into this, rather than see their organisation being left behind as competitors seize the opportunity.

GenAI based modernisation techniques, such as mLogica’s LIBER*M and STAR*M, provide capabilities to migrate applications from the mainframe and legacy distributed database environments to the cloud at one third of the time and half the cost. Cloud technology is cheaper to implement as there are consumption-based cost models that scale with your business, with no up-front capital expenditures.

Innovative cloud-native technologies like CockroachDB provide out-of-the-box capabilities such as automatic global data distribution and multi-cloud interoperability – capabilities which previously required complex and costly workarounds to emulate when rehosting legacy monolithic databases onto the cloud.

Agile based product management techniques drive incremental delivery, based on time-to-value of business benefits, rather than big-bang implementation.

PwC UK’s business transformation expertise, including management of risk and regulatory requirements, in collaboration with mLogica’s and Cockroach Labs’ innovative technology provides firms with a comprehensive end-to-end solution delivering safer execution and higher confidence of benefit delivery. Difficult Board conversations – where the CEO has to explain why the transformation to a high growth company isn’t happening – should be a thing of the past.

So, CEOs should no longer see business transformative technology modernisation as a career threatening move. They should use it to build a more agile, cost-effective organisation. This way they can leave a foundation for growth, which could be their highly regarded legacy for the organisation.

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