Top 10: Legacy Modernisation Vendors

Let’s be honest: in this day and age, most companies are claiming to be ‘AI-first’.

However, their infrastructure often tells a different story.

Advanced, agentic AI workflows can’t work on top of spaghetti code and siloed data, meaning the era of easy ‘lift-and-shift’ cloud migration has been left behind.

Now, the market demands a deep, structural overhaul to fix technical debt – rather than just moving it.

In light of this, Technology Magazine ranks the Top 10 vendors in the legacy modernisation space. More than just service providers, these leading companies are turning heavy legacy anchors into agile future-ready forces.

10. Kyndryl

CEO: Martin Schroeter
HQ: New York, USA
Employees: 73,000

The world’s largest infrastructure services provider, Kyndryl, has pivoted from an IBM spin-off to an independent modernisation powerhouse. 

Its Right Workload framework is designed to help enterprises optimise their IT infrastructure by placing workloads on the most appropriate platform – whether that be mainframes, private clouds or public clouds like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.

Through its Kyndryl Bridge open integration platform, the firm provides real-time visibility into complex IT estates, using AI to identify automation opportunities and reduce the technical debt that hinders digital transformation.   

9. DXC Technology

President and CEO: Raul Fernandez
HQ: Virginia, USA
Employees: 120,000

DXC leverages its massive install base in the insurance and public sectors to drive platform-aware modernisation. 

By combining industrial-scale IT management with the high-end digital engineering capabilities of its Luxoft division, DXC delivers a bimodal approach: stabilising core systems while building agile digital front-ends. 

Its proprietary AMBER platform for software-defined vehicles is central to this shift, using embedded AI to transform legacy automotive hardware into modern, software-driven experiences.

8. Capgemini

CEO: Aiman Ezzat
HQ: Paris, France
Employees: 341,100

Capgemini is a major player in the European modernisation landscape thanks to its Intelligent Industry strategy, blending enterprise IT with operational technology (OT).

As well as this, its ADMnext offering goes beyond maintenance to promise Zero Debt, utilising the proprietary economic Application Portfolio Management (eAPM) tool to visualise complex IT estates. 

This visualisation is critical for sustainability-focused clients, allowing them to calculate and reduce the carbon footprint of their legacy infrastructure while migrating to optimised cloud environments.

7. Cognizant

CEO: Ravi Kumar Singisetti
HQ: New Jersey, USA
Employees: 336,800

Working to its motto Intuition Engineered, Cognizant has industrialised the modernisation process through its Skygrade platform.

This cloud-native toolset automates the containerisation of legacy applications, making it ideal for clients navigating complex multi-cloud architectures. 

Cognizant specialises in modernising sensitive, high-volume transaction systems, with its Neuro AI suite further accelerating this by applying AIOps to self-heal legacy environments during the migration process.

6. IBM

CEO: Arvind Krishna
HQ: New York, USA
Employees: 293,400

IBM is one of the strongest players when it comes to being the architect of the hybrid cloud, leveraging Red Hat OpenShift to offer true portability for legacy applications.

Its strategy centers on modernising in place, using the Watsonx Code Assistant for Z to translate COBOL into Java – all without requiring a risky platform shift. 

This unique capability, combined with the co-creation methodology of the IBM Garage, allows highly-regulated clients in banking and government to modernise their core systems securely while avoiding vendor lock-in. 

5. Wipro 

CEO: Srini Pallia
HQ: Bengaluru, India
Employees: 233,300

Wipro has breathed new life into its modernisation approach with its FullStride Cloud business line and a consulting-led strategy, bolstered by the acquisition of Capco.

Wipro champions the Strangler Pattern of modernisation, incrementally replacing legacy monolith functions with microservices to minimise operational risk. 

Its Zoom-to-Cloud platform specifically targets SAP and Oracle environments, accelerating migration timelines by up to 40% and ensuring rapid time-to-value for clients requiring complex business process re-engineering.

4. HCLTech

CEO: Vijayakumar Chinnaswamy
HQ: Noida, India
Employees: 227,500

Widely viewed as the engineer’s choice, HCLTech drives what is calls Continuous Modernisation through its deep heritage in product engineering and R&D. 

Its CloudSMART strategy, for example, is powered by the AI Force platform, which automates code refactoring and documentation for undocumented legacy systems.

Because of this, HCLTech is a preferred partner for heavy-industry and telecom clients needing to modernise embedded software and operational technology – moving beyond simple web application updates to transform the core of the business.   

3. Infosys

CEO: Salil Parekh
HQ: Bengaluru, India
Employees: 323,500

Infosys leads the AI-first modernisation charge with Infosys Cobalt, a collection of more than 35,000 cloud assets and blueprints. 

By integrating Cobalt with its Topaz AI suite, Infosys delivers cognitive modernisation, using AI agents to analyse legacy business logic and identify process bottlenecks. 

Supported by the world’s largest corporate training infrastructure in Mysore, Infosys can rapidly deploy massive, specialised teams to execute complex transformations.

2. TCS

CEO and MD: Krithi Krithivasan
HQ: Mumbai, India
Employees: 608,000

TCS is a leader in the modernisation market thanks to its Machine First Delivery Model, utilising industrial-scale automation to modernise legacy estates. 

Its MasterCraft suite uses Gen AI to reverse-engineer and document millions of lines of legacy code, significantly reducing migration risks. 

TCS is also a powerhouse in the financial sector, leveraging its proprietary BaNCS platform to migrate global banks from aging mainframes to modular, cloud-native architectures – combining deep contextual knowledge with execution scale.

1. Accenture

CEO: Julie Sweet
HQ: Dublin, Ireland
Employees: 779,000

Accenture drives total enterprise reinvention through its US$3bn Cloud First strategy.

Its Living Cloud approach rejects one-time migrations in favour of continuous optimisation, leveraging the massive myWizard automation platform. 

As the primary partner for all major hyperscalers, Accenture combines unmatched strategic depth with technical execution, helping its clients build a Digital Core that integrates cloud, data and AI to future-proof their operations.