From tactical cost to strategic foundation

In many organizations, lifecycle management isn’t just delayed, it’s often ignored entirely in strategic initiatives. Transformation programs often focus on new applications, services, or user experiences. They assume the existing infrastructure will be able to support everything. But when infrastructure modernization is not part of the program, those initiatives are being built on outdated systems from day one.

When LCM is acknowledged, it’s usually not addressed early enough. Critical activities like patching, refreshing, or retiring legacy systems are left for ops teams to figure out after launch. At that moment change is harder, the risk is higher, and technical debt has already taken hold.

The result? Short-term wins that create long-term drag. Systems age, dependencies are undocumented. Digital platforms ends up on an increasingly fragile foundation.

This is more than a missed detail, it’s a systemic issue. Gartner and IDC estimate that up to 80% of IT budgets go toward simply maintaining existing systems, leaving less than 20% for innovation. Globally, that’s over $2.5 trillion a year spent keeping outdated infrastructure alive.[2]

But here's the reality: no digital initiative is stronger than the infrastructure it runs on. That’s why lifecycle management shouldn’t follow strategic programs. it should be built into them from the start. When LCM is treated as part of the initiative, it ensures long-term scalability, resilience, and control.

When lifecycle is aligned with strategy, it becomes an enabler of transformation, not a constraint. It allows organizations to:

• Maintain a clean, digital backbone
• Deploy new services faster and with less risk
• Reduce downtime and operational surprises
• Integrate acquisitions or new regions more smoothly
• Stay ahead of compliance and regulatory expectations

In other words, LCM done well becomes the digital foundation on which agility, innovation, and trust are built.

But it’s not that simple

Lifecycle Management seems simple: deploy, maintain, retire. But in globally distributed organizations, it becomes a maze of dependencies, approvals, vendors, and timelines.

Delivery is fragmented across silos. Even after reaching end-of-life, a system may remain deeply embedded in critical workflows in several dependant regions. This makes standardization or decommissioning far more difficult to execute. Business units defer upgrades to avoid downtime. Vendors follow inconsistent processes. And no single team owns the whole lifecycle chain.

The result?

• Outages caused by forgotten hardware
• Delayed migrations due to undocumented systems
• Security holes left unpatched

In many cases, LCM isn’t failing because teams don’t care, it’s failing because no one is responsible end-to-end.

The cost of getting it wrong

When lifecycle execution fails, the symptoms show up fast and painfully:

• Project delays: Infrastructure upgrades are postponed due to missing documentation or supply delays, blocking broader programs like digital transformations.
• Security breaches: A forgotten legacy system remains unpatched and exposed, becoming an entry point for attackers.
• Regulatory risk: Under frameworks like DORA or NIS2, failure to manage systems within support lifecycles can result in fines or audit failures.
• Employee burnout and attrition: Engineers spend their time firefighting instead of building. Risk of institutional knowledge leaving.
• Inefficiency and opportunity cost: Employees loose productivity to inefficient systems, most of which are legacy.

What it takes to get lifecycle management right

Make LCM part of how your organization runs and grows the business. That means bringing lifecycle into strategic planning, making it part of how new initiatives are designed, and ensuring it's executed consistently across teams, regions, and vendors.

1. Make lifecycle a shared responsibility, not an afterthought

Ensure that lifecycle management is embedded into your plan, design, and delivery activities. Rather than treating it as an operational task, bring it into existing forums, architecture boards, delivery governance, service operations so it’s considered from the start.
The goal is to create clear, shared responsibility across architecture, operations, security, finance, and procurement. Everyone plays a role in making sure infrastructure evolves alongside the business, not after the fact.

But it’s more than just coordination. Lifecycle plays a strategic role in ensuring that every digitization effort includes the foundation it depends on. That means aligning infrastructure upgrades with application roadmaps, building lifecycle milestones into delivery plans, and making sure the backbone: networks, systems, hardware keeps aligned with business change.
When this mindset becomes standard, lifecycle management moves from reactive upkeep to a core enabler of stability, agility, and long-term scale.

2. Unified metrics and executive accountability

Define and measure metrics that show the value of LCM and support decision making. Track KPI’s like:

• % of infrastructure within support lifecycle
• Mean time to decommission post-EOL
• Time-to-patch against policy
• Regional differences in lifecycle compliance
• Incident correlation to lifecycle status.

3. LCM Execution at global scale

Even with the right policies and architecture, executing lifecycle globally is one of the most underestimated challenges. It's where strategy meets real-world friction: conflicting calendars, uneven maturity, customs delays, and site-specific challenges.

That’s why organizations treat global LCM execution as a formal program, not a background task delegated to regional ops. Execution needs the same priority as any major transformation initiative. This means:

• Assigning program-level leadership with end-to-end visibility across countries, dependencies, and timelines. Someone needs to own coordination, resolve blockers, and manage inter-regional dependencies in real time.
• Developing a global rollout playbook that includes regional differences, compliance constraints, and local vendor capabilities. Templates and checklists reduce mistakes and help local teams execute consistently.
• Synchronizing time windows, responsibilities, and sign-offs across time zones and business units. Cross-regional coordination ensures lifecycle actions don’t stall in handoff or get executed out of sync.
• Engaging trusted vendors early to plan for hardware lead times, site access, and regulatory requirements. Local execution succeeds when partners are aligned well before launch.

Build structured, cross-regional execution plans with risk buffers, staged rollouts, pilots, and clear escalation paths.

4. Organizational enablement and change management

5. Strong technology foundation

• A successful LCM program needs support from a integrated technology stack:
• CMDBs and discovery tools that offer real-time visibility into asset status, lifecycle stage, and dependencies.
• Observability platforms that detect risk signals in infrastructure, performance drops, unpatched exposures, and abnormal behaviour.
• Automation for routine LCM tasks like OS patching, configuration, or end-of-life shutdowns.
• Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) to standardize environment rebuilds
• Lifecycle dashboards that expose systemic risk and progress across all global locations.

YaWorks + Global Systems and Software: alliance for global execution

• YaWorks defines the LCM operating model, aligning technology roadmaps with organizational processes and global compliance.
• We lead the technical architecture and modernization design including cloud-ready, on-prem, and hybrid network environments.
• We develop Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) blueprints to streamline deployment and reduce variation across regions.
• We integrate lifecycle into the organization embedding it in governance, processes, and team capabilities.
• GSS ensures on-time delivery of certified hardware across regions, manages physical rollouts, and handles secure retirement logistics.

For example: When supporting a multinational to modernize its network infrastructure across 80 countries, YaWorks led the full lifecycle architecture, from designing the platform, defining IaC rollouts, and integrating lifecycle governance while GSS executed global logistics and site delivery. The result: globally standardized infrastructure, local execution without friction, and lifecycle control embedded into both systems and teams.

Final word: LCM is the unseen battlefield of modernization

• Seeing complexity early
• Aligning process and ownership globally
• Backing strategy with real-world logistics
• Building the muscle to modernize continuously, not just occasionally

So the question is: who in your organization owns the battle beneath the surface?
If the answer isn’t clear, the risk already is.