Why legacy systems are the real AI bottleneck in the mid-market

Artificial intelligence is often framed as a technology race defined by cutting-edge models, governance frameworks, and trillion-dollar infrastructure bets. But for thousands of mid-market companies, the real barrier to AI adoption is far more basic. It is not model selection, talent shortages, or regulatory uncertainty. It is legacy systems.

A global survey by Futurum Group found that 35% of organizations identified legacy system integration as a major barrier to AI adoption, underscoring how outdated infrastructure, not AI capability, is often the real constraint.

The question, then, is not whether legacy systems create friction, but when they shift from being a technical inconvenience to becoming a structural barrier that materially limits a company’s ability to generate measurable ROI from AI.

Not Strategic Levers but Isolated Experiments

The shift happens when legacy infrastructure stops enabling operational scalability and starts actively constraining strategic execution, says Cesar DOnofrio, CEO and co-founder of ...