Editor’s note: The following is a guest post from David White, go-to-market lead for AI and modern infrastructure at Google.
Companies often defer infrastructure modernization, believing it’s the financially responsible move. Yet, throughout my career, I’ve watched enterprises try to run 21st-century operations on last-century technology, only to struggle as more agile competitors pull ahead.
It’s like inheriting a farmhouse everyone loves, but when you plug in a new dishwasher, the circuits blow. To bring that farmhouse into modern living, you’ve got to start from the ground up.
The consequences of delay are evident across industries. Organizations that continue operating on outdated infrastructure find themselves unable to meet market demands, board expectations and customer needs. That’s why companies are finally recognizing they can’t keep kicking the can down the road, shifting modernization from a discretionary initiative to a required investment.
Once the company has committed to modernization, the immediate challenge becomes: where to start? With limited time and resources, you need a structured approach that maximizes impact while minimizing disruption. This is where strategic prioritization becomes essential.
I advocate for the “layers of the cake” approach: begin as far down the stack as possible, because each foundational improvement simplifies everything above it.
Start with the fundamental layer — networking, compute and storage infrastructure. This foundation makes data system modernization significantly easier, which in turn simplifies application modernization. Organizations that modernize out of sequence inevitably double their work, forced to repeatedly retool applications after changing the systems they run on.
With a solid foundation in place, the modernization journey itself can begin.
From migration to transformation
In my experience, successful transformations don’t happen all at once — they progress through distinct phases that build upon each other.
The journey often begins with pragmatic migration. Some enterprises modernize by choice; others are forced into it by circumstances — like getting out of a data center when the lease ends on a specific date.
While speed is critical, a rushed migration without a clear plan leads to unnecessary costs. Even during this initial move, look for light optimization opportunities: A virtual machine that needed 16 CPUs on aging hardware might perform optimally with just 8 in a modern environment.
With systems operating in their new environment, the focus naturally shifts to refinement and optimization.
Cloud platforms offer tools that identify over-provisioned resources. For Kubernetes clusters, fine-tune scaling parameters to eliminate waste. With storage, implement auto-tiering so that rarely accessed data automatically migrates to less expensive tiers.
While these optimizations deliver immediate cost benefits, they’re still just intermediate steps in a larger plan.
The true destination is business transformation through cloud-native innovation. This lets the company move beyond cloud as a data center to using serverless architectures and managed services. This liberates staff from routine maintenance, enabling teams to drive real business value rather than just keeping the lights on.
The financial framework
With an established modernization roadmap, the next challenge becomes securing the resources to execute it effectively. Success hinges on speaking the language of financial leadership and presenting a comprehensive view of risks, costs and benefits.
When building a business case, document everything that currently consumes budget — from system outages and service interruptions to overtime for emergency patching and staff hours spent maintaining legacy systems.
These are not abstract concerns: They represent real dollars that modernization can redirect toward innovation and growth. At the same time, be transparent about transition requirements. Modernization isn’t simply switching from a Ford to a Chevy — it requires genuine retraining and adaptation.
Look beyond immediate costs to long-term financial implications as well. Many enterprises don’t recognize how restrictive licensing agreements are until it’s too late. Effective cloud modernization requires choosing platforms that prioritize agility over vendor lock-in.
While cost reduction often initiates modernization discussions, true value emerges in broader outcomes:
- Operational improvements: Do systems require less managerial overhead while operating more reliably?
- Innovation velocity: Can new capabilities be deployed faster?
- Security posture: Has the organization moved from reactive to proactive?
- Customer experience: Are users benefiting from better performance, improved reliability and expanded capabilities?
These metrics translate directly to competitive advantage in the marketplace, top line revenue and deepened end customer relationships, often delivering greater long-term value than just the immediate cost savings.
Future-proofing investments
The real value of modernization is building the agility to embrace the unknown. You can’t predict which innovations will emerge in the next few years, but you can position the organization to adopt them quickly when they arrive.
Modernization isn’t some IT wish list item anymore. It’s the price of admission to compete in today’s global market. The companies that lean into modernization end up writing the rules for their sectors. Meanwhile, hesitant competitors find themselves perpetually playing catch-up, making increasingly desperate attempts to close the gap.
The era of incremental tweaks to legacy systems is over. Real transformation begins with infrastructure that accelerates rather than hinders innovation. Would you rather explain to your board why you’re investing in modernization now, or why competitors are consistently beating you to market later?
What’s at stake isn’t whether you can afford to modernize — it’s whether you can afford not to.
