In 2025, companies are not just cutting IT costs – they are increasingly saying: we are resetting everything. Technology leaders are stopping updating outdated systems and starting to make decisions that would have been considered too risky not long ago: instead of patching and extending the life of the old, it is better to declare ‘technological bankruptcy’ and build the IT ecosystem from scratch – lighter, more flexible and ready for the AI era.
It’s not just a metaphor. Forrester’s 2026 Budget Planning Guides report indicates that there is a growing number of organisations that, rather than maintaining legacy systems, are shifting resources to technologies that enable growth: automation, analytics, generative models and edge computing solutions. IT leaders put it bluntly: every line of code and every server rack must make a business case – otherwise it stops being an investment and becomes a waste.
Reset instead of maintenance
Technology debt is nothing new. The problem is that in 2026 it has ceased to be a marginal cost hidden in IT department budgets. It has become a strategic burden. Older systems are increasingly incompatible with the requirements of modern applications, more difficult to maintain, more expensive to integrate with the cloud and – crucially – delaying the deployment of AI. In a reality of inflationary pressures, geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty, no one wants to maintain IT that does not drive growth.
Forrester encourages leaders to take a more radical approach: instead of investing in maintenance, ditch the outdated stack, outsource its minimal support to external providers and build a new architecture – cloud-optimal, AI-native, data-driven.
This approach is not yet the norm, but it is spreading rapidly. For companies with scale and the right organisational readiness, it is a way to leapfrog efficiency, cost and competitive advantage.
What exactly is ‘technological bankruptcy’?
This is a strategic concept – it means stopping investment in systems and processes that do not support key business objectives. It’s not just about closing server rooms. Often, it’s also a decision to abandon monolithic ERP systems, rewrite applications to microservices, migrate data to edge-ready solutions or completely overhaul the digital architecture.
In practice, declaring ‘technological bankruptcy’ means three moves:
- We are cutting off funding and development of older systems.
- We outsource their basic maintenance or migration.
- We are building a new system layer from scratch, based on modern technologies.
For IT teams, it is a major challenge, but also an opportunity to break free from years of increasing complexity. For finance departments, a reason to optimise the cost structure and accountability of technology spending.
Who can afford it?
Large organisations in industries with high transformation pressures are most likely to take this route: finance, healthcare, telco. They have bigger budgets, more incentive to implement AI, and more to lose if they miss the moment.
Examples? Banks moving to core cloud-native banking, healthcare companies investing in AI for image recognition and documentation automation, or retail chains ditching their own POS systems in favour of unified SaaS platforms with open APIs.
But the approach is also gaining adherents among medium-sized companies that previously could not afford such a transformation. Today, the availability of low-code tools, integration services and off-the-shelf AI components makes it possible to carry out a ‘technological reset’ faster and cheaper than ever.
What does this mean for the IT channel?
For integrators, resellers and technology providers, this is a moment of changing sales rhetoric. It is no longer enough to offer ‘modernisation’ or ‘digital transformation’. – the customer needs someone to help them decide: what do we leave behind, what do we remove, and what do we build from scratch.
It is also a huge opportunity for companies specialising in migration, integration, IT project management or change management. The customer is no longer looking solely for technology – they are looking for a partner who will guide them through the full process of ‘cutting the cord’ and building a new working environment.
The winners will be those partners who, in addition to providing hardware or software, can advise on restructuring the IT environment, suggest new cost models (e.g. OpEx vs CapEx) and support in training teams in new tools.
Not everyone should declare “bankruptcy”
This approach has its risks. Giving up legacy systems too quickly without a migration plan can end up in operational paralysis. Data loss, incompatible systems, overloaded teams – these are real risks.
Not every organisation is ready for a full-blown ‘bankruptcy’ – but every organisation can rethink which components of today’s IT can be sidelined, frozen, moved to focus budgets and resources on what really creates value.
In many cases, the right solution will be a hybrid model – combining the new with the well-controlled old. The key point, however, is that the old system can no longer govern the budget, strategy or rhythm of IT operations.
The future builds faster without baggage
Declaring ‘technological bankruptcy’ is not a failure – it is a conscious strategic decision. It is the courage to say: what got us here will not get us further.
IT leaders shedding technology debt today are not just improving their cost structure. They are gaining space to invest in future technologies: agent-based AI, edge intelligence, decision automation.
As the pace of change accelerates, organisations with lightweight, adaptive IT environments are winning not because they are more innovative – but because they can react faster, experiment and deliver value to customers. And that is today’s greatest asset.
