On the demand side, while the pressure to reduce the total cost of ownership for legacy systems has always been there, the issue is getting more acute as systems age and people familiar with them start to retire, creating a skills shortage, the Celent report noted.
"However, the key demand driver to address the legacy challenge now is the increased customer expectations around payments — where and how they can pay, speed of payment, and availability of information," said Zil Bareisis, senior analyst at Celent and author of the report."Ambitious payment providers are seeking to create and curate a broad emerging payments ecosystem by providing payments and value-added services."
Celent found that few companies choose to make a major overhaul from scratch, and those that do can still take up to five years to complete the process. Alternatives include migrating to software-based products or outsourcing to payments-as-a-service providers.