How do professionals perceive legacy systems and software modernization?

Existing research in legacy system modernization has tradi-tionally focused on technical challenges, and takes the stand-point that legacy systems are obsolete, yet crucial for an organization’s operation. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether practitioners in the industry also share this percep-tion. This paper describes the outcome of an exploratory study in which 26 industrial practitioners were interviewed on what makes a software system a legacy system, what the main drivers are that lead to the modernization of such systems, and what challenges are faced during the modern-ization process. The findings of the interviews have been validated by means of a survey with 198 respondents. The results show that practitioners value their legacy systems highly, the challenges they face are not just technical, but also include business and organizational aspects