Challenges of Automated Code Conversion

Company executives are increasingly realizing the core issues they are facing with their legacy software applications and complex mainframe environments:

Monolithic applications are difficult and expensive to manage and update
The current legacy environment does not support today’s business needs nor future needs
Subject Matter Experts are retiring and leaving the business. Hourly rates and special incentives are required to engage legacy code experts, which has created a frenzy to find legacy SMEs.
Legacy applications are extremely complicated, often poorly documented and lack a Standardized Programming Framework

What often happens next is that others who are tool providers convince you to Lift & Shift your software onto a Cloud provider, kicking your problem down the road – and often – magnifying it. The other occurrence we often see is selecting a tool vendor for an Assessment, but that is all that provider can do. When we are called in to extract Business Rules, we often need to go back and re-assess applications because we find gaps in prior work over 95% of the time.
Wouldn’t it make sense to do your project right … the FIRST time?

Assess – Extract – Enable Microservices

There are many reasons NOT to use automated code conversion tools to modernize your legacy software:

By the time code is converted it is already out of date, typically trailing new software by a generation or two
There are many hidden costs from intervention to get the software to actually work including additional development, helping with data migration and supervising the testing from a senior level professional. If you use outside help, your internal developers will not have gained any institutional knowledge of how to maintain that code
In demand developers often will not accept employment due to having to work on old technologies. Legacy systems that are extrapolated to modern frameworks are more appealing to developers seeking to use newer technology to hone their skills
Ongoing maintenance is costly due to consulting firms wanting to stay engaged long term at high billing rates
Automated code converters may not eliminate the issues that originally frustrated users because code converters do not know the difference between useful and useless. If you have legacy software that represents rules that are no longer valid, the automated code converters are going to convert the same old baggage from before into new baggage. If you have forms and workflows that are inconvenient, inefficient and frustrate users, the automated code converter will carry forward those same inefficiencies in modern code in an architecture that is not built to support it
Automated code converters do not know anything outside of the code that they are converting. As a result, the converted code will not be architected to take advantage of new opportunities to integrate modern technologies and fails to take into consideration potential performance gains involved in moving off the legacy system
You will not regain the institutional knowledge embedded in your legacy software. Most legacy software contains business rules driving your business operations that are not often documented anywhere else. Business rules are often lost, applications are negatively affected and you will be unable to add new features and capabilities for fear of disrupting rules and logic no one else understands. Digitally modernize your Legacy Software right the first time with the AveriSource Platform