Technology
Apr 24, 2025
What Is Your Legacy Software System Really Costing You?
_
A legacy software system isn’t broken. It’s quite the opposite: we maintain legacy systems because they are really good at their jobs.
A little too good, some might say, because they steadfastly keep operations going in the background, they’re also quietly costing you in ways that only become visible when your business needs to change, scale or integrate.
In South Africa, many businesses still run mission-critical operations on decades-old platforms that were ahead of the curve 10–15 years ago, when many corporates invested in custom-built solutions.
In April 2025, for example, legacy software was the hot topic at the CIO South Africa Summit in Cape Town, where representatives from TFG to Shoprite, Mustek, Huawei and more, weighed in on the subject, saying that today businesses need to evolve faster than they can adapt.
The consensus? When it comes to legacy systems, it’s time to turn IT talk into business language.
Here’s what you need to know about the hidden costs of legacy software systems.
A legacy software system is any software platform that is no longer actively supported by its original developers, uses outdated or deprecated technology, or cannot easily integrate with modern tools. While it may still be reliable in isolation, it wasn’t designed for today's fast-changing cloud-driven environments.
Globally, COBOL alone accounts for between 220–800 billion lines of active code, with 43% of banking systems and 90% of ATMs still reliant on COBOL. It’s not going away overnight, but it’s also not where innovation happens anymore.
What’s the real cost of sticking with a legacy software system? It’s not just about bugs or crashes.
It’s about what you can’t do:
Legacy systems make change hard. Want to roll out a new customer-facing app? Add mobile functionality? Automate a core process? These projects stall because a legacy software system was never designed to integrate with today’s tools.
In 2022, McKinsey noted in a tech trends report that when US investment bank Goldman Sachs employed an AI-based tool to generate unit tests for legacy software, it led to a 180× increase in the speed of writing tests for a core back-end application, showing that new tech is not only faster, but can help you improve your legacy system’s performance.
This is the biggest risk. The legacy software system might be running fine until you need something changed or connected. Then you discover that the engineers who built it have long since moved on, and modern developers either don’t have the skills or don’t want to take on the risk. You’re stuck.
According to BCX’s annual Digital Innovation Index, the biggest stumbling block for innovation among South African companies is their legacy systems (as well as siloed systems) and the skills gap – finding engineers who can work on those systems.
Legacy software systems often lack modern security protocols. They weren’t built with today’s cyber threats in mind — and in many cases, they can’t be patched or upgraded easily. That leaves vulnerabilities open and compliance at risk.
When US agencies did an in-depth review of coding language vulnerabilities in 2023, they found that common languages like C and C++ are vulnerable to 70% of the most common cybersecurity threats.
A legacy software system usually lacks real-time data access and analytics. That makes reporting slow and decision-making reactive, limiting your ability to compete.
According to Deloitte, in 2024, 90% of business executives agree that analytics is a key differentiator in sectors like finance, yet many legacy systems are incompatible with advanced analytics tools.
Similarly, real-time payments processing is set to make up nearly half of all payments globally, but many legacy systems can't process instant payments, meaning you could get left behind.
And yet, ripping everything out and starting from scratch is not always feasible. It’s expensive, disruptive, and risky in its own right.
That’s where Kohde comes in.
We’ve worked with many companies across South Africa in sectors like agriculture, logistics, healthcare, and financial services — many of whom came to us with exactly this problem. They had a legacy software system that worked, but couldn’t move forward.
Our approach is low-risk, deeply informed, and always grounded in business continuity.
We don’t just fix the tech. We help you regain control of your roadmap.
See all our software solutions case studies.
Table Charm Direct, a large Southern African direct selling business, came to Kohde with a robust but ageing legacy software system that couldn’t support the complexity of their rebate logic, genealogy tracking, and cross-border operations.
Rather than throw it all away, we built a digital ecosystem around the parts that still worked, allowing us to:
The result? Over 400,000 registered users, real-time operational insights, and seamless scalability across four countries — all without the disruption of a full rebuild.
The truth is, most businesses don’t need a total rebuild. You need a partner who understands both the old and the new — someone who can modernise what matters most in your legacy software system without putting your business at risk.
At Kohde, we’ve helped companies across South Africa move forward with confidence by respecting the systems that built their success, while building the future on top of them.
Want to talk about your legacy stack? Let’s find a future-proof path forward.
