Philosopher George Addair once said, ‘Everything you’ve ever wanted sits on the other side of fear’.

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I speak to enterprise IT leaders every day. The reality of moving complex, duct-taped-together, yet critical infrastructure, away from a known set of parameters into unchartered waters of modernization is daunting enough from a practical and technological perspective.

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We also suspect a more human, emotive element may be at play. Because when it comes to modernizing their legacy systems, it’s human nature to prefer the familiar, even if we know it’s not necessarily the best path forward. Is the effort worth the risk to the system, the organization, my career? We’ve all heard of “fight or flight” as a reaction to an uncertain, possibly threatening situation, but there’s one that’s just as prevalent: freeze.

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To explore this idea, we researched 150 enterprise IT leaders in some of the largest public and private sector organizations across the US and UK. The findings were enlightening:

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• Nearly three-quarters (71%) said modernization was stressful.
• Over a quarter (27%) said they worry that if the technology they endorse fails to meet expectations, their employment may be terminated.
• Over half (57%) said they had considered advocating for a major investment in legacy modernization but ultimately decided to delay the project. 

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Add to that the mad scramble to locate and extract where AI can be of greatest value, the urgency on IT leaders is growing. In short: the pressure to modernize is increasing, but the risks to modernizing are also increasing. It’s understandable that IT leaders feel like they’re in a lose-lose situation.

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But what if the effort is worth the risk. . . because the risk can be proven to be extremely low? What if the most impactful decision isn’t about who gets the modernization project, but how it’s approached?

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After observing the decades-long patterns in modernization efforts, we’re addressing the root causes of the fear hindering modernization by following three core principles for safely rewriting and moving applications to the cloud:

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• The system in action is the specification.
• Recreate its behavior exactly in a modern language. 
• Roll increments into production.

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These principles inject confidence and control into the modernization process. Our insistence on putting thoroughly tested and validated increments into production lets teams demonstrate continuous, measurable progress through working software—vastly decreasing the risk of failure. Investing in doing these things right collapses risk. No longer must you cross your fingers and wait—instead, you can turn the crank and ratchet forward with evidence of progress.

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Most importantly, customers can make any future innovations easily, quickly, and inexpensively without the need for specialized knowledge in aging programming languages.

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Addair may believe that everything you want is on the other side of fear, but what if you didn’t have to fear in the first place? Wouldn’t that be a nice thought?