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Are Your Modernization Efforts Stalling Before They Start?
Experts
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Ronnie Bagan |
Steven Nooijen |
Many organizations begin their modernization journey with bold goals—reducing costs, accelerating innovation, and enabling AI—only to hit roadblocks shortly after they start. Progress stalls, technical debt accumulates, and AI initiatives fail to scale. The problem isn’t the ambition; it’s the absence of a clear, actionable roadmap.
A Technology Assessment changes that. It goes beyond technical diagnostics, aligning infrastructure, data strategy, and security with business outcomes. The result: a modernization journey that is faster, smarter, and driven by measurable impact.
According to Ronnie Bagan, Xebia’s Global Growth Lead for AWS, “Modernization isn’t about lifting and shifting legacy systems into the cloud—it’s about making strategic choices that deliver business value through scalable, secure, and AI-ready architectures. It all starts with the right assessment.”
Where Modernization Efforts Go Wrong—And How to Fix It
Many organizations treat cloud migration as the finish line rather than the foundation for continuous improvement. They shift applications into the cloud without addressing inefficiencies, only to face rising costs and underperforming systems.
Wehkamp, a leading Dutch online retailer, encountered this challenge. Their initial cloud migration increased costs instead of reducing them. A Technology Assessment by Xebia revealed inefficiencies in their architecture and recommended targeted optimizations. The result was a significant drop in cloud costs and improved performance—validating the power of a focused assessment.
But the challenges of modernization don’t stop at cost management. Many AI initiatives collapse under the weight of disorganized data and poor integration. Steven Nooijen, Xebia’s Data & AI Strategy Lead, explains:
"AI readiness requires a secure, scalable, and stable platform to deploy algorithms. Without a strong foundation, AI initiatives become costly experiments with limited impact as they are hard to scale."
A global insurance provider faced exactly this problem. Despite heavy investment in AI tools, their models failed to deliver real-time insights due to fragmented data silos. Xebia’s Technology Assessment pinpointed the issue and recommended a unified data lakehouse architecture with streaming capabilities. Once implemented, the insurer could deliver real-time AI-driven recommendations to customers, improving both engagement and retention.
Security and compliance are equally critical but often overlooked until too late. When working with a European fintech company, Xebia discovered vulnerabilities that could have resulted in non-compliance with NIS2 and DORA standards. Through a Technology Assessment and a security architecture redesign, the company not only met compliance standards but also reduced their exposure to cyber threats.
A Smarter Approach: Turning Assessment into Action
At Xebia, we believe a Technology Assessment should be a launchpad for outcomes, not a static report. That’s why our approach moves swiftly from discovery to business impact, combining technical insight with business priorities.
The process is designed to:
- Provide rapid insights through collaborative discovery sessions.
- Identify the most impactful opportunities for modernization.
- Deliver working prototypes to validate recommendations quickly.
- Equip your teams with clear next steps and a roadmap for implementation.
Step 1: Discover Opportunities and Design the Future (1 Week)
In just one week, we identify where modernization will drive the greatest value. We start with a Technology Assessment Workshop, where our experts engage with your team to uncover bottlenecks, opportunities, and strategic priorities. This is not a theoretical exercise—it’s a practical, business-driven discovery.
For Eurail, this phase revealed that their aging ticketing platform was limiting their ability to launch new customer services. By evaluating their application architecture and cloud readiness, we recommended a modular, cloud-native design. This approach enabled faster feature releases, improved platform resilience, and reduced operational costs—paving the way for a successful digital transformation.
The outcome of this phase includes not only recommendations but 2–3 actionable modernization opportunities, complete with proposed architectures. For instance, we might suggest migrating a monolithic application to microservices or implementing real-time analytics pipelines to enhance customer experience.
"In one week, we help organizations identify where modernization will deliver the greatest business impact—whether through cloud-native applications, serverless architectures, or data platform optimization."
— Ronnie Bagan, Global Growth Lead AWS, Xebia
Step 2: Beyond the MVP: A Roadmap for Continuous Modernization
Every Technology Assessment concludes with a clear, actionable roadmap. This is not a static report but a strategic guide to your ongoing modernization journey. It outlines:
- Which initiatives to prioritize and why.
- How to scale MVPs into full production solutions.
- Security, compliance, and cost optimization measures (including FinOps and GreenOps).
For Eurail, this roadmap guided their broader cloud modernization initiative, helping them launch new customer-facing services more quickly while cutting operational costs. Their journey didn’t end with the MVP—it was only the beginning of continuous digital evolution.
Step 3: Build, Validate, and Deliver Results (1–2 Weeks)
Insight without action is wasted. That’s why, after the Technology Assessment, the next step ot to start building and validating solutions—fast. Within two weeks, we develop Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) for the top modernization opportunities identified in Phase 1.
We don’t just present a concept; we demonstrate it in action. During a working session, we walk your team through the MVPs, explaining the technical choices, business benefits, and potential for scaling. This hands-on approach means your team gains not only solutions but also the knowledge to implement and extend them.
For a global financial services firm, we built an MVP of a real-time fraud detection system. In under two weeks, the system reduced false positives by 30%, delivering immediate business value and securing executive buy-in for further investment.
"We don’t stop at recommendations. By delivering real MVPs within weeks, we help organizations validate their modernization paths and accelerate time-to-value."
— Steven Nooijen, Data & AI Strategy Lead, Xebia
Why Start with a Technology Assessment?
A Technology Assessment is more than a technical review—it’s your blueprint for business-driven modernization. It helps you understand your current capabilities, pinpoint the most valuable opportunities, and move forward with confidence. With Xebia’s approach, you gain:
- Rapid Insight: Discover modernization opportunities in days, not months.
- Tangible Value: Validate recommendations through working prototypes.
- Strategic Direction: Get a clear, actionable roadmap for next steps.
- Business Impact: Align every technical decision with measurable business outcomes.
Ready to Get Started?
Discover what’s possible with a Technology Assessment Workshop: In just one week, identify high-impact modernization opportunities tailored to your business.
Plan your path forward with a business-driven roadmap: Gain a clear action plan for scaling modernization, optimizing costs, and driving continuous improvement.
See results fast with MVPs that validate business value: In two weeks, get working prototypes that show the impact of modernization—before making large-scale investments.
👉 Schedule Your Technology Assessment and take the first step toward smarter modernization with Xebia.