Integration Is a Flavor of Modernization
API integration gets treated as the thing you do while you plan the "real" rewrite. Gartner's own modernization framework disagrees — and agentic AI just made Encapsulate urgent, not optional.
That's the assumption baked into most internal modernization conversations, but it isn't how the field's own reference framework is built. Gartner's application modernization framework lists seven distinct strategies, and Encapsulate — "leverage and extend the application's features by encapsulating its data and functions, making them available as services via an API" — is the first one listed, sitting alongside Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Rearchitect, Rebuild, and Replace as an equally legitimate option, not a placeholder for teams that can't commit to a "real" rewrite.