Many businesses are finding IT infrastructure modernization essential to effectively compete in today's faster-paced, data-centric business environment. But, as a number of these organizations have found out, there are numerous obstacles and challenges with preparing, implementing and maintaining a modernization strategy.

Insight commissioned IDG Research Services to conduct a survey of 200 executives regarding their modernization strategy. The report, "The State of IT Modernization 2020" (Feb. 2020), found that while 67% of respondents cited IT modernization as crucial to meet their business transformation objectives, only 25% achieved their initial goals. Organizations spent an average of 40% of their total IT budgets on these initiatives, according to the report.

Roadblocks that cause businesses to delay or abandon infrastructure modernization projects often vary from organization to organization and occur at different stages of the process. But, overall, the major challenges include establishing data governance policies to support modernization, as well as delineating, optimizing and integrating on-premises, cloud and edge operations platforms.