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Facebook TransCoder: a migration panacea or a mirage?

Last year Facebook announced TransCoder, a tool that converts code from one programming language to another. Like many companies, Facebook also has legacy code that runs critical features and functionality of their platform. They also have billions of active users. It’s no wonder they chose the automation approach for migrating their legacy code to more modern technologies. With this approach, Facebook can preserve its original investment and reduce the risk of significant business disruptions that the proverbial, brute-force rewrite would otherwise bring.

Facebook TransCoder Flow Image
Source: Facebook AI Blog

 

TransCoder can help modernize legacy systems; however, the devil is always in the details when trying to bring the migrated code to production quality, release the migrated legacy application into production, and retire it.

Any machine learning translation tool can only get the complete migration of an application so far. If Facebook’s TransCoder can translate 90% of the application code, one line out of every ten still needs a software developer’s attention.

For an application with ten million lines of code, one million lines of code would need to be hand-written with production quality.

A manual rewrite of 10% of a large application may take years. In fact, the translated code may never see a production environment. Even with Facebook’s size, virtually unlimited resources, and access to the world’s best talent, the company will still need to manage the entire software migration lifecycle and all of the pieces that it takes to bring the new code into production.

Modernization is more than just code translation

Machine-driven migration tools from source to target programming languages play a crucial role in achieving successful modernization projects. These tools are akin to best-of-breed compilers and their role in greenfield application development. Yes, we need a good compiler, but without the well-established best practices of DevOps, no compiler by itself can ensure the successful completion of a software development project.

What will it take to migrate a large and often complex body of legacy code that runs a critical aspect of the business to a modern technology platform and release it into production without any operational disruptions or development freezes?

This particular challenge has been the Achilles’ heel of every modernization project. No migration tools, including the TransCoder, make any attempt to even mention it or, let alone address it.

Tools like TransCoder are often positioned as “auto-magic.” Buy a piece of AI software, and *poof* all of the migration work is done in a few keystrokes. But a programmer cannot take a COBOL program, wave an AI wand over it, and turn it into microservices or properly architected modern-day application. Right now, AI tools are decades away from being able to transform legacy applications in this manner.

Migration tools inside a modernization process

Migration tools such as TransCoder are just pieces of the chain of moving parts needed to run a well-oiled machine of an otherwise complex modernization process. Therefore, the real value is in integrating such tools inside the entire modernization lifecycle to achieve the kind of an assembly line that is needed to make a complex modernization manageable in terms of process and predictable in terms of time and cost.

No single automation tool is a silver bullet for a modernization project, and we should know. We’ve spent 25+ years modernizing legacy applications, building and using our proprietary migration tools. When we finally managed to integrate the source code migration tools into an entire modernization process, our clients saw considerable gains in code quality, efficiency, and affordability.

Our Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP) supports the entire modernization lifecycle: from analysis and planning to transformation and remediation; from build and deployment to testing and production release. It applies the same systematic, iterative, and automation-driven modernization processes to produce production-ready, modernized applications. It is compatible with any translation libraries or rule-sets, no matter the source or target programming language, platform, or framework. By automating the complete modernization process where a tool like TransCoder can be integrated into as part of an entire assembly line, the MLP platform:

  • Saves thousands of hours of manual effort
  • Reduces the time and cost of a modernization by 90% compared to traditional approaches
  • Is 100% automation driven yielding predictable outcomes
  • Ensures 100% functional equivalence
  • Eliminates the risk of introducing unexpected regressions or random defects
  • Provides complete transparency and interoperability for all stakeholders

Like Facebook’s TransCoder, new tools are emerging to take on challenges evident in legacy application modernizations, but they are limited in and of themselves.

An integrated platform that facilitates an automated, reliable, and transparent modernization while ensuring 100% functional equivalence with no operational interruptions is needed to take the migrated application into production.

MLP delivers what TransCoder only promises.

Contact us to see MLP in action.

How to prepare for legacy application modernization

In-house applications, once associated with good fortune, have now become an albatross. These systems may still run business-critical processes or orchestrate data between commercial systems, but their underlying, aging technology has become a real liability. You know it’s only a matter of time before something fails, and it won’t be pretty.

You may be hearing a lot of bluster about the best way to go about modernizing legacy applications. “Refactor,” “re-platform,” “encapsulate and expose for microservices,” “lift and shift,” and “low-code rebuilds” are just a few of the buzz-phrases floating out there. At Synchrony systems, we also have our own view of how best to modernize. But the how is not always as straightforward as some try to make it seem. How to modernize depends on many factors that span well beyond source code or target technology.

So where do you begin? The following steps should not only help you prepare for legacy application modernization; they also should help you clarify the right modernization methodology to pursue.

Know what you have: document your current state

While this may sound like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised at how many companies don’t have a complete, up-to-date overview of their technology stack. Perhaps that’s because they’re busy putting out daily fires or launching new initiatives. Or maybe staff turnover put the critical, technical documentation on the back burner. Regardless of the reason(s), before starting any potential modernization initiatives, you must possess a full technical understanding of your IT portfolio and which parts of it are mission-critical to your business operations.

Three dimensions of the current state must be well understood: architecture, timeline, and capital.

Architecture: While it’s ok to not have all the answers, accurately describing what you know—and highlighting what you don’t—is important.

  • Do you have access to the source code of your in-house applications?
  • Do you understand your applications’ source platform dependency?
  • Do you understand your applications’ component architecture?
  • Do you understand your applications’ runtime architecture?

Timeline: Many in-house applications are built using licensed, 3rd-party software. Understanding the timing of the maintenance and support contracts is an important input to the modernization effort.

Capital: Capital includes the dollars used to support the in-house applications, as well as the resources and time spent maintaining them. You also need to understand what other IT projects your company is currently funding, the budget for the modernization initiatives, and when those funds will be available.

With this information, you can start to map out the priorities for your modernization.

Know where you want to be: document the future state

Sometimes the future state has a strategic mandate from the top—become cloud-first or consolidate technologies onto a single platform. Other times, the future state evolves more organically. Regardless of the path, you need a documented roadmap of the new vision for IT. This plan is really a risk-mitigation strategy for your legacy applications. It’s only a matter of time before the old versions start to fail, their security gets breached, a 3rd-party vendor stops supporting the software, or some other business-impacting event occurs.

Like the current state, your future state plan has the same three dimensions: architecture, timeline, and capital.

Architecture: Future state technology architecture needs to be aligned with the business need, and not just be technology for technology’s sake. The tech vision must map to the business vision and support the business value of investing in modernization. Along with technology, the future state should include recommendations about the people and process changes required to operate in this new architecture.

Timeline: Modernizations can be lengthy projects with many concurrently moving parts. A strong roadmap includes critical dates such as contract renewals, end of support, and/or end of life. It includes budget cycles for funding, and it maps critical hires such as short-term contractors, modernization specialists, and/or full-time developers/IT professionals. The roadmap also should include important business dates like acquisitions, major product launches, peak selling seasons, etc. All these factors can help shape your modernization priorities and urgency.

Capital: In addition to the investment allocation for the initiative, you also need to understand the capital outlay needed for resources—internal and external—required for success.

Determine the path forward

Now you can perform a gap analysis of the current and future states. The timeline and available capital will be key factors—the “how”—that inform your approach to modernization.

Another factor to consider is the relative effort of modernization. For example, rewriting an application from scratch is not only time-intensive from a greenfield development standpoint, but the effort to make it operational would include retraining users, rewriting documentation, re-tooling support, etc. Many hidden costs of rip-and-replace strategies that may be overlooked during the initial scoping will later become quite burdensome.

For very small, in-house applications with minimal business impact, simple migration tools may be all you need for the modernization. For very large, in-house applications, the strategy may be more complex and consist of several approaches, including:

  • Rip and Replace: replace with an off-the-shelf alternative
  • Lift and Shift: re-platform or re-host the entire legacy workload onto a virtual cloud environment
  • Rewrite: retire and invest in ground-up greenfield development
  • Re-architect: attempt to improve in place the underlying legacy application architecture into a more modern, service-based, web architecture.
  • Migrate: using automation, migrate “as-is” to a new target platform, preserving functionality and user experience

At this stage, talking with companies that specialize in modernizations is a wise idea. With the groundwork you’ve done, modernization experts should be able to give you a proposal for moving forward, a timeline, and a cost estimate for the modernization.

Start now

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” It’s never too early to begin the work necessary for a clear strategy to move away from your legacy applications.

At Synchrony Systems, we have over two decades of experience helping companies modernize their legacy, mission-critical applications in the most cost-effective and transparent way possible. Whether you are just starting to think about modernization or have an urgent need, we are happy to talk with you about your specific situation.

Smalltalk application modernization technology

Smalltalk application modernization technology

Smalltalk is a dynamic programming language and a pioneer in object-oriented technology. Its versatility, simplicity, and elegance allowed people to rapidly build complex systems across a variety of industries and applications.

Although other programming languages surpassed Smalltalk in popularity for commercial application development, few captured its unique capabilities.

This makes Smalltalk applications difficult to replace without giving up design and functionality.

The trusted experts at Synchrony Systems have spent over two decades developing technology to address the unique challenges in modernizing Smalltalk applications. Our solution fast tracks Smalltalk modernizations to meet digital transformation demands while preserving the functionality and elegance of the original design. Our solution is designed to prevent operational disruptions — no code rewrites, no code freezes, no halts in development.

Previously, dynamically-typed systems were not good candidates for migrations.

Today, Synchrony’s Static Typing Engine makes these migrations possible. It’s the only proven solution in the market that turns dynamically-typed Smalltalk into statically-typed Smalltalk. It accurately identifies live code and isolates execution paths that are then rapidly migrated or deprecated. The analytical capabilities of our solution give you complete visibility into the Smalltalk interactions within your system. This allows you to extract functionality and migrate it to properly architected microservices.

The entire Smalltalk modernization process is managed through Synchrony’s Modernization Lifecycle Platform. MLP provides an automated, incremental, and agile modernization experience for all stakeholders–from analysis and planning to transformation and remediation to build and deployment to testing and production release. All without impacting the production version of your Smalltalk application or interrupting your day-to-day business operations.

With Synchrony, drastically reduce the cost and eliminate the risk and failure that comes from a rewrite with the most advanced Smalltalk modernization solution on the market.

Ready to launch your Smalltalk into the future? Contact Us.

5 ways your legacy systems may add to cybersecurity risks

Not all technical debt is created equal. Many legacy business systems—whether architected in-house or purchased from software vendors—contain inherent security vulnerabilities that may be growing worse over time. In a recent Accenture study of government agencies, 85% of IT leaders believe not updating legacy technology will threaten their agency’s future. The Workplace Agility report from Capita and Citrix found more than half of CIOs surveyed think legacy applications are delaying digital transformation.

Here are five security vulnerabilities associated with legacy business systems:

1. Outdated security functionality doesn’t adapt to evolving threat landscape

Today’s hackers enjoy a target rich environment—in 2018, there were more than 15,000 known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). When legacy systems were developed, these applications may have been on top of then-current cybersecurity practices. But with the passage of even a short time, the threat landscape evolves while many legacy systems get left behind.

Legacy systems may be incompatible with security features surrounding access, such as multi-factor authentication, single-sign on and role-based access, or lack sufficient audit trails or encryption methods. Whatever the reason, these systems are unable to accommodate today’s security best practices.

When security flaws are discovered in legacy software, they are widely published on security blogs and in industry journals. While it is important to update security professionals on vulnerabilities, hackers are also receiving a free education. In the case of legacy systems, cyber criminals have had years to perfect tools for exploiting well-known vulnerabilities.

2. Older hardware, software or databases create legacy dependencies

Sometimes it isn’t just that a legacy application lacks security features, but rather that the ability to continue using that legacy application is contingent upon a variety of legacy dependencies that introduce additional security vulnerabilities. These legacy dependencies can include hardware (such as old mainframe computers), database structures, operating systems, or other legacy software.

A classic example of legacy dependencies can be found within many enterprise ERP systems. Suppose you added a third-party reporting tool or created a customized barcode scanning application five years ago that integrated with an older version of your ERP. You should have upgraded your ERP system twice by now in order to benefit from security enhancements, but you have put it off because moving to the latest version of the environment would break the integrations between your custom apps or third-party solutions.

Over decades many organizations built a web of proprietary, interconnected, mission-critical business systems that still feed into legacy databases. A recent strategic technology plan for Grand Traverse County, Michigan gives an all too familiar description:

“The AS400 based applications that are running on the IBM Platform are in-house programmed over decades. This results in many application revisions by multiple programmers with little or no oversight into best practices for security and usability. This lack of oversight creates what is referred to as spaghetti code, or code that is difficult to untangle and secure.”

Grand Traverse County had built 57 custom applications on its outdated IBM mainframe environment, and the IT department requested over $6 million just to migrate to modern platforms and applications—about 1/10th of the county’s entire annual budget. Modernizing and securing spaghetti code can be complicated, causing many businesses to delay until after a security incident occurs.

Legacy dependencies can also create a drag on business that extends far beyond the IT department. Here are two ways they slow down or prevent the achievement of critical enterprise objectives:

  1. In-house systems can hold back the development of a better customer experience. Are you unable to provide customers with self-service? Do you lack the ability to launch subscription products because a legacy billing system cannot provision and invoice for them correctly?
  2. Legacy dependencies can stall a strategic move to the cloud and digital transformation. A recent survey conducted by market research firm Vanson Bourne found that 85% of enterprise digital transformation architects said legacy databases limit their ability to transform. During transformation projects, 60% of architects observed that managing legacy system involvement took too much of the IT team’s time.

3. Legacy systems lack full-stack security visibility

Legacy systems with spaghetti code also tend to leave discarded bits of code and tools hanging around—quite possibly in your production environment. Small apps may still be used by a few employees, but may not show up in IT inventories, even though they contain old open source code. Because these tools aren’t under active development anymore, there should be a plan to sunset them or modernize them, but if they slip off the IT radar, security lapses may ensue.

Java development magazine Jax cautions IT security professionals to

“Remember, any application – no matter how big, small, old, or new – is fair game for cybercriminals so businesses can shrink their threat surface by removing any potential footholds into their infrastructure. IT and security teams need to implement a plan and process for regularly reviewing their technology stack and sunsetting applications that no longer serve a business function.”

When business systems run on a modern platform, the IT department can utilize full-stack security solution suites to gain better visibility into enterprise-wide security.

4. Internal applications more likely to become externally exposed over time

Even businesses with good security procedures and the best of intentions about solving technical debt incur increased vulnerability over time with legacy systems. That’s because as years (or decades) pass, mergers, acquisitions and corporate restructuring may leave orphaned hardware and software that no one “owns” anymore. With nobody using these assets and no decommissioning plan in place for them, the legacy hardware or software bumbles along in the background, until one day an IT change inadvertently results in its exposure to the external world. An unguarded, unintended door open without anyone keeping an eye out for intrusions.

An example of this occurred when FedEx acquired a company called Bongo. Bongo’s legacy storage server went unnoticed as its IT assets were incorporated into FedEx’s environment. The result was an Amazon S3 server left unsecured online, sitting on FedEx’s network.

5. Legacy platforms lack the ability to implement additional layers of security quickly

Many security packages weren’t designed for legacy mainframe environments and operating systems. And the legacy applications themselves often lack the kind of real-time security monitoring needed to pin down and resolve security intrusions. Legacy systems might monitor performance, for example, but lack the details and contextual information that create the true visibility needed by security professionals. Audit trails and log functionality might be missing altogether or could be in a proprietary format that proves difficult to access and analyze.

The lack of adequate monitoring and logging can get enterprise businesses into trouble quickly if legacy applications are connected to both the internet and an internal corporate network. Once a legacy application has been exploited without triggering any alerts or logs, cybercriminals have free rein to run through the internal network cracking into other systems—potentially undetected—while the IT team lacks visibility into where the original intrusion occurred. By contrast, when you’re operating applications that are part of a modern cloud or hybrid tech stack, you can quickly and easily add plug-and-play security and network monitoring solutions that are interoperable with your platform.

Conclusion

The solution to legacy security vulnerabilities is tech stack modernization, followed by Continuous Modernization to keep future technical debt from accruing new security risks. Gain greater visibility into technical debt that might cause security concerns by creating an application catalog that notes legacy dependencies and assigns a measurement of risk. Then create a decommissioning plan to eliminate technical debt from the riskiest legacy systems first.

Synchrony’s Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP) brings an automated upgrade process, a collaborative work environment, and transparent and traceable perspectives to software upgrades. Continuous Modernization, or CM, is a complementary approach to the DevOps practices of Continuous Delivery (CD) and Continuous Integration (CI). CM gives enterprises the ability to systematically and incrementally apply new software updates to in-house applications, APIs, or any other software components, regardless of the underlying technology being upgraded.

Learn More

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Modernization: from dreaded word to strategic enabler

By Charles Araujo. This article was originally published by Intellyx.

I remember the dreaded words ringing through the house, “Charlie, it’s time to clean your room.”

I pretended I didn’t hear, but inevitably and begrudgingly I stopped what I was doing and began the chore.

Once I was done, however, my mom explained that with my room clean we could now begin the process of transforming it from a child’s bedroom into the teenage haven I had been begging for incessantly.

Getting everything tidied up, it turned out, was the prerequisite to the transformation I so desperately wanted.

Much like “clean your room,” the term modernization has long been a dreaded word in the world of IT.

Uttering it causes involuntary shudders up the spines of IT leaders as they imagine all of the hard work, pain, and suffering to come — with almost no upside at the end of this particularly arduous road.

More importantly, the thinking has gone, while modernization is necessary, investing in it will take precious resources away from more progressive and business-critical initiatives.

So modernization efforts have been left for another day. But it is long past time for this pattern to change.

New advances in both technology and methodologies are transforming modernization from a chore into a strategic enabler — one that may now be the essential component of successful transformations in the digital era.

The problem with modernization

The trepidation surrounding modernization efforts has been well-warranted.

So-called legacy environments — the targets of modernization — are often Byzantine structures that organizations have built layer-by-layer, over the years. Each successive layer has made these systems more complex, more rigid, and almost impossible to change.

As a result, these legacy architectures have become frozen-in-time even as organizations rush to adopt modern technologies in other parts of the technology stack.

With support costs continuing to rise, organizations are recognizing that many of these legacy systems are increasingly becoming liabilities. Still, organizations have seen the pathway to modernization as daunting as they have associated it with the need to completely rewrite and rearchitect these complex and intertwined environments.

These perceived complexities, which have inhibited modernization efforts, however, are now having an even more significant effect. Organizations realize that they must connect their new, modern environments to the legacy systems responsible for core business processes to deliver the sort of end-to-end experiences that customers, partners, and employees demand.

The lack of modernization has now become a roadblock to the business transformations that are vital to an organization’s future.

This situation has left enterprises between the proverbial rock and a hard place. But perhaps modernization doesn’t need to be so difficult after all.

Three shifts that transform modernization

As the need to modernize has become a strategic imperative, both enterprises and tech companies have been exploring ways to overcome its historical challenges.

Those organizations that are finding success with their modernization efforts have discovered that the answer lies in three shifts at the intersection of new technologies and new modernization approaches.

Shift #1: from linear to iteration

First, progressive leaders have realized that they had to stop looking at modernization as a linear, one-dimensional process and, instead, see it as an iterative, modernization lifecycle.

This approach recognizes that modernization demands are themselves continually changing and that modernization is a continual effort that organizations must treat as such.

Shift #2: the move to model-driven

Second, they realized that it was a misconception that was holding them back. They believed that they could only modernize by re-platforming (attempting to transition an existing codebase to a new platform) or via Herculean “rip and replace” efforts in which they completely rewrote an application using modern code and architectures.

They have found greater success, however, with a model-driven approach in which they replicate application functionality, but do so using a combination of a refactored codebase and architectural transformation on modern platforms.

Shift #3: analysis & automation required

Finally, they realized that achieving this type of transformation demands codebase and workflow analysis to deconstruct and manage the modernization effort properly — and that this type of detailed analysis required automation. To achieve this third shift, organizations needed new technologies that would complete this analysis, do automated code conversion, and perform the architectural transformation in a holistic manner.

By making these three shifts, these leading organizations have been able to transform their entire approach to modernization.

The Intellyx take: from roadblock to strategic capability

For most of IT’s existence, modernization has been a nuisance. It has been something that enterprise leaders knew they should do, but which was also a burdensome chore that they would put off if at all possible.

More recently, however, the lack of modernization has become a strategic roadblock.

These rigid and challenging-to-change legacy environments are now inhibiting organizations’ ability to create the type of end-to-end experiences their customers demand.

Bringing a fresh perspective and approach to the modernization challenge, however, is enabling leading organizations to transform their modernization efforts from a roadblock to a strategic enabler.

Those organizations that can modernize their legacy environments most rapidly and effectively, in fact, are realizing a strategic advantage over their competitors that are unable to do so.

This competitive potential is why these leading organizations are turning to companies, such as Synchrony Systems, to give them the tools they need to modernize while sidestepping many of the historical challenges that kept them tied to the past.

The need to modernize legacy systems will only grow in importance as organizations drive forward with their transformational efforts. Those that get modernization right and turn it into a strategic enabler will be the ones that win in the Digital Era.

About the author

Charles Araujo is an industry analyst, internationally recognized authority on the Digital Enterprise, and author of The Quantum Age of IT: Why Everything You Know About IT is About to Change. He is a Principal Analyst with Intellyx, the first and only industry analyst firm focused on agile digital transformation. He has authored three books and published over 100 articles. He has been a regular contributor to both InformationWeek and CIO Insight Magazine and has been quoted or published in magazines, blogs, and websites including Time, CIO, CIO & Leader, IT Business Edge, TechRepublic, Computerworld, USA Today, and Forbes.

 

 

Copyright © Intellyx LLC. Synchrony Systems is an Intellyx customer. Intellyx retains final editorial control of this article.

True cost of tech debt in legacy apps

Tech debt usually carries a negative connotation. While it may sound like something to be ashamed of, in truth, every enterprise operates with some degree of tech debt. It’s really an indicator of success—you’ve grown so much, over such a long time that your technology could not keep up. Millions of lines of existing computing code undergird most enterprise operations, and sooner or later, “all code is technical debt.”

So tech debt is not inherently “bad” but it can certainly prevent enterprise businesses from achieving the agility required to maintain relevance in our evolving digital economy. As proprietary legacy systems continue to age, the modern technology stack is advancing at increasing speed. Newer platforms offer greater interoperability and help organizations leverage the full value of their business data through analytics and AI.

Technology-driven competitive pressures are building

Traditionally conservative industries, such as financial services and insurance, tend to carry a higher tech debt load. Banks and insurers rightly wish to avoid any mistakes with software systems that underpin their customers’ financial security.

Mission-critical systems are often architected on legacy platforms with proprietary codebases that expanded over multiple decades, making them difficult to replace or update. Eliminating tech debt comes with fear of significant business disruption. However, executives do recognize that customers demand a better customer experience from brands. Today, 96% of insurers believe digital ecosystems are making an impact on the industry.

Customers expect to be able to personalize the services they need. They crave a fully digital experience with 24/7/365 access to accounts, quotes, and information, as well as multiple channels of customer support. Enterprises need to employ digital, mobile, cloud, and IoT technologies to drive new value for customers. Laggards risk being outmaneuvered by innovative fintech and insurtech businesses using advanced technologies to differentiate themselves. Here are a few examples:

Legacy platforms can only be pushed so far

Many legacy platforms simply can’t support the types of new services that banks and insurers want to offer customers nor the new tools to empower employees.  To fully leverage the value of big data and utilize advanced technologies, enterprises need a modern tech stack.

Unfortunately, many continue to try to bolt new technologies onto outdated platforms, with limited success. After studying the state of digital transformation in the banking and insurance sector, Forrester analysts concluded that innovations were largely being built on top of outdated technology and that risk-averse cultures slowed digital transformation and got in the way of efforts to learn how to monetize data and offer greater value to customers.

When surveyed by Capita and Citrix last year, 56% of CIOs admitted that legacy applications are delaying digital transformation for the entire organization, and 84% said an inability to roll out new services is affecting business competitiveness. When asked why enterprises don’t rid their legacy applications of tech debt, CIOs cited:  The cost of re-architecting or transforming applications (68%), user disruption (43%), and lack of in-house skills (36%).

Executives may lack visibility into the true cost imposed on their organizations by tech debt in their legacy systems. Let’s look at how to quantify tech debt in dollars and cents, and then look at the bigger picture of business risk.

Assessing your tech debt: the math

When deciding when or if it is the right time to pay off tech debt, most organizations assess it in terms of the dollars required. Kelly Sutton described the math behind paying off tech debt. To quantify how much debt is currently carried by the organization, it is necessary to calculate the principal and interest:

  • The investment required to pay off the debt (programmer hours or contractor developers) can be thought of as the principal.
  • The cost of continuing business-as-usual by using engineering resources to bridge the debt on existing platforms can be thought of as the interest. This can be measured in terms of the number of incidents to resolve or the person-hours required.

With this way of quantifying the cost of tech debt, enterprises can compare the ongoing cost of the tech debt versus the one-time cost to fix it. This provides a framework for decision-making about which debts are worth paying off and how IT projects should be prioritized. But this assessment only captures the short-term (near current) condition of your tech debt. For a longer-term assessment, we have to expand the thought process to include the softer costs.

Calculating the true cost of tech debt: opportunities lost

Once you can perform the math of tech debt today, it’s time to think in bigger terms. After all, tech debt is not solely based on the cost of hampered organizational productivity today. The much larger cost may be found in how tech debt will constrain your business in the future.

To calculate the true cost of tech debt, we need to think in terms of risk. What current business opportunities could be jeopardized or even lost in the future due to excess tech debt? Consider these questions:

  1. Will tech debt prevent your product teams from delivering new features, products, or services that customers demand?
  2. Does tech debt obstruct your organization’s ability to work effectively and efficiently? For example, is your organization able to collect and visualize data, in real-time, from every global location for complete enterprise visibility?
  3. Is tech debt limiting workforce recruiting and retention? For example, does a lack of support for cloud platforms prevent hiring remote employees? Does a convoluted codebase make it difficult to attract top IT developers?
  4. Are there opportunities to partner with (or acquire) promising fintech or insurtech startups that cannot be explored because technology stacks are too disparate?
  5. Is the organization already losing customers due to a stale/outdated customer experience? How quickly might that accelerate as new competitors arrive?
  6. How might tech debt prevent full monetization of enterprise data?

In the larger competitive landscape, what does your organization stand to lose in both the near- and long-term? The long-term is more difficult to predict, because you do not yet know all of the opportunities that will arise in the future, given the rapid pace of technological change. But bank on this: If tech debt is already slowing your organization, or forcing you to pivot away from new opportunities, the “rising inflation on technical debt” will only compound the problem with time. Characterize the full risk profile of tech debt now, so the executive team can gain greater visibility into its true cost for decision-making purposes.

About Synchrony Systems

At Synchrony Systems, we help companies reduce tech debt by transforming legacy, in-house applications to modern technologies while preserving business-critical functionality. With our Modernization Lifecycle Platform, we provide an automated, reliable, and transparent modernization while ensuring 100% functional equivalency with no operational interruptions. And with our continuous upgrades, your in-house applications will never fall behind again.

 

FinovateFall 2019: financial services modernization urgency

FinovateFall in September is always one of the most highly anticipated shows for the FinTech industry. With over 1,600 key influencers, 60+ live demos, and 120+ expert speakers, it’s four intense days of networking, learning, and strategizing for the future.

While this year’s major themes centered around big data, analytics, AI, customer experience (CX), and digital transformation, an underlying buzz said change is in the air. The anticipated change isn’t just about the new tech, which is always exciting, but the shrinking generational digital divide. We are entering unprecedented times where the largest wealth transfer in history will start taking place, and the younger generation is beyond just digitally tuned-in—they don’t know any other way of life.

After reflecting on the show, we’ve distilled what we learned to these four takeaways:

1. Disruption is real and is happening.

We’ve been hearing for some time that the financial services space will be disrupted by the digital economy, but now that time truly seems to be here. Digital-only banks such as Ally are gaining market share, big tech giants like Amazon and Apple have launched digital financial service offerings, and traditional financial institutions such as US Bank are going beyond simple digital strategies to develop highly-personalized, smart mobile banking applications.

“When it comes to financial systems, there are a variety of major threats to the status quo,” wrote Greg Palmer, Vice President of Finovate and Master of Ceremonies for FinovateFall 2019 in his recent blog. “But an alarming number of FIs [financial institutions] are falling into the same trap…they aren’t making the ‘responsible’ or ‘grown up’ decisions right now that will make their lives easier in the future. Instead, they are waiting for the next big shock to force them to.”

The big message from the conference was either innovate and disrupt your financial services company or be disrupted by someone else. Disruption is happening.

2. Company culture can make or break your initiatives.

Although FinovateFall 2019 showcased new tech, many of the session speakers mentioned company culture as a critical factor in transformational initiatives. Cultures must become more agile, innovative, and customer centric to stay competitive. In “Building a Culture of Innovation,” panelists from HSBC, Amazon, and Ondot Systems stressed the role leaders play in a company’s cultural change. It starts at the top with clearly defining and articulating the vision, aligning staff and champions, and proactively managing the process.

They also said to look at examples outside of financial services for inspiration. Companies in other industries have built centers of excellence and innovation labs to help foster creativity, and these lessons can be applied to financial services. If customers are having simple, impactful digital experience with non-financial services industries, they will expect the same from their banking and insurance institutions. Panelists warned not to outright mimic the competition or other industries, however. Take the time to understand what your company’s end customers are seeking, and what makes sense for your company’s team and your company’s brand. Your culture can be a competitive differentiator and driver of transformation.

3. New technology is an enabler of, not a substitute for, sound strategy.

It’s easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest technology as the solution to digital transformation and digital customer experience. But technology is only an enabler of a sound strategy and a thorough understanding of what your current and future customers want and need from your institution.

In the session “Delivering the Next Generation in Customized Customer Experience,” executives from Bank of America, Citi, and Northwestern Mutual discussed the importance of investing in digital experiences that are personalized to the varying needs of customers spanning generations. They recommend mirroring the digital experiences with which customers are already familiar and integrating services into those channels that customers are already using. They also reminded us not to discount the influence of Millennials, as they are promoting change and increasing adoption of digital experiences within older generations.

4. Turn legacy systems from roadblocks to facilitators of innovation

For large, well-established, and decades-old brands, legacy technology is just a fact of life. A few sessions addressed using APIs to extract data from legacy systems to power analytics, dashboards, reports, and even new services. While these API transformation programs can potentially unlock some of the value of the legacy systems, the sessions also included discussions about modernizing legacy systems as part of your overall technology strategy.

The reality is that systems built on aged or legacy technology can be vulnerable to cyberattacks. (Just ask Equifax.) Yet some of these in-house applications still operate core business operations. Rather than bolting on net new technology, develop a plan to modernize these critical legacy applications to help enable the digital experiences that consumers want while reducing security risks.

Thanks to @finovate for a fantastic show. See you next year!

About Synchrony Systems

At Synchrony Systems, we help financial services companies transform legacy, in-house applications to modern technologies while preserving business-critical functionality. Using the world’s only Modernization Lifecycle Platform, Synchrony Systems provides an automated, reliable, and transparent modernization while ensuring 100% functional equivalency with no operational interruptions. And with our continuous upgrades, your in-house applications will never fall behind again.

Three highlights from DXWorldExpo 2018

Several leaders from Synchrony Systems attended CloudExpo / DXWorldExpo New York on November 12-13, 2018. The two days were packed with 20+ keynotes, 200+ breakout sessions, and 150+ exhibitors sharing the latest in the world of Cloud Computing, DevOps, FinTech, Digital Transformation, and more.

A stat we found sobering but not surprising is that 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. While there are many factors that can contribute to the fall of a company, we believe an important one is an inability to evolve the business. Companies can be held back by dated business models, irrelevant products or services, and/or aging technology. The world is changing at rates never seen before; to survive, companies must continuously adapt.

While we walked away with many new insights, we would like to share three highlights from sessions at DXWorld that resonated with us.

1) “Digital transformation” has become an umbrella buzzword, but real challenges are beneath the hype.

The term “digital transformation” (DX) is being used by everyone for just about any company initiative that involves technology, the web, eCommerce, software, or even customer experience. While the term has certainly turned into a buzzword with a lot of hype, the transition to a more connected, digital world is real and comes with real challenges.

In his opening keynote, Four Essentials To Become DX Hero Status Now, Jonathan Hoppe, Co-Founder and CTO of Total Uptime Technologies, shared that beyond the hype, digital transformation initiatives are infusing IT budgets with critical investment for technology. This is shifting the IT organization from a cost center/center of efficiency to one that is strategic for revenue growth. CIOs are working with the new reality of cloud, mobile-first, and digital initiatives across all areas of their businesses. What’s more, top IT talent wants to work on DX initiatives or will look for opportunities elsewhere.

Besides the business promises of DX and the pressure from IT talent, technical debt is a major challenge for many CIOs. In-house legacy applications built on antiquated programming languages and platforms can hold the business back from being digitally enabled.

Jonathan said the key to success for DX transformation is to start small. Rather than tackle a large transformational initiative with many potential fail points, he suggested picking ones that have less risk and can give the team early wins to build momentum.

We couldn’t agree more. We often advise IT leaders to investigate modernization solutions that can migrate the application to the desired platform/language with 100% equivalency, rather than re-writing a business-critical application from scratch. This path saves not only money but critical time in our new, fast-paced digital world.

2) Cognitive enterprises are on the horizon, and they require a whole new tech architecture.

IBM Fellow, CTO, and cloud expert Shankar Kalyana gave a compelling presentation on The Path to Hybrid Digital Transformation. He talked about the essential attributes to enable business growth and innovation on the cloud, why existing data sources are so critical to success, and how DevOps and Containers can deliver new services based on cognitive, machine learning, and IoT. He believes that the rise in cloud-enabled exponential technologies is teeing up another era of business architecture change.

To realize the cognitive enterprise, which is the enterprise of the future, he said, businesses must embrace the following key characteristics:

  • AI-infused, cloud-enabled business platforms
  • Automation, self-healing by design
  • Experience-centered design
  • Fit-for-mission skills
  • Product management philosophy
  • Agile DevOps, test-driven experimentation culture
  • Hybrid, multi-cloud operating model and architecture
  • Multi-speed, multi-modal flexibility
  • Everything as a service
  • Glo-Cal reach
  • Containers as a critical technical strategy
  • Agile architecture

However, today’s reality is that a majority of the data (80%) still lives in the enterprise, not in the cloud. What’s more, all CTOs and CIOs deal with legacy systems and technology. The goal is to embrace future technologies while pulling legacy forward, to work together beautifully from an end-consumer/customer experience point. This requires a holistic approach to transformation.

We also see our clients balancing the three objectives shown above: optimizing IT, adding cloud service to existing applications, and building new applications on cloud-native platforms. Our job at Synchrony is to help our clients move in the direction of modern architecture while mitigating risk to business operations.

3) We can learn a lot about business transformation from Amazon

Many different speakers used Amazon as a case study. Perhaps the most comprehensive session was Digital Transformation and Disruption, Amazon Style – What You Can Learn by Chris Kocher, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Grey Heron venture consulting. He offered an interesting insight into the new markets and industries that Amazon is disrupting, many of which thought they were safe but now are in danger of being “Amazoned.”

His session examined how Amazon creates new value with vertical and horizontal integration, Value Creation of new categories, Value Migration into adjacent categories and markets, and why they excel with their Value Delivery System.

He also gave examples of how Amazon “zigs when others zag.” They launched a 70-page printed toy catalog for the 2018 holidays, for example, which is reminiscent of the Sears and Toys “R” Us catalogs popular in years past.

He also shared some critical success factors in digital transformation, in the light of the Amazon case study. They are:

  • Align with customer value – not your technology or internal systems
  • Focus on business outcomes – rethink how you deliver value
  • Leverage the right ecosystems – partner, partner, partner
  • See business model innovation – not just product
  • Define your monetization strategy – not just technology vision
  • Bust internal, functional silos – build customer-focused organizations

Now the hard part: knowledge into practice

Like many attendees, we walked away with lots to think about for our own business, as well as how we can continue to help our clients along their technology modernization journeys. What did you walk away with? Tweet us @SynchronySys.

Thanks to @CloudExpo and @DXWorldExpo for a great event.

Government IT modernization RFP guide

As businesses and consumers rapidly advance in their use of cloud, mobile, and web 2.0 technologies, governments, and sectors such as energy are navigating their own IT modernization initiatives. They have a precarious balancing act of embracing digital strategies and mobile initiatives to serve the people while safeguarding sensitive information and using technology in smart, secure, and affordable ways.

Maintaining legacy systems is expensive. Over the last decade, the U.S. federal government spent roughly 75-80% of its IT budget on the operation and maintenance of its outdated legacy systems. Recently the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has codified IT modernization as a key objective and is working closely with participating agencies to establish funds that can help replace legacy IT systems and produce modern IT equipment and services.

The U.S. federal government is not alone. U.S. state and local governments and governments around the globe are also striving to serve their constituents with modern technology while reducing the amount they spend on legacy systems. Their efforts to move to a digital, mobile-first engagement model often are held back under the weight of legacy systems—and, in many cases, smaller budgets.

Slavik Zorin, CEO of Synchrony Systems, has been in the software modernization field for over 20 years. He has worked closely with trusted government partners such as IBM and the “Big Four” firms helping government organizations transform their legacy applications, thereby reducing costs while gaining the benefits of modern architecture. He offers these tips when developing an RFI or RFP for your modernization initiative:

1. Look for options other than rip-and-replace proposals

In today’s age of digital transformations, something even more disruptive to the organization than the upkeep of its monolithic legacy systems is a monolithic, big-bang approach to modernizing these systems. Many of the default, go-to large System Integrators that respond to RFPs are continuing to offer antiquated, wholesale rip-and-replace solutions. At the outset, the time, resource, and dollar estimate of these approaches appears reasonable. However, the eventual cost is significantly higher than anticipated because of change requests arising from the continuously shifting requirements of an evolving legacy system during the modernization project. These change requests introduce a high risk to the modernization project and compound the cost and time to complete it. RFP reviewers need to be mindful of a proposal that offers a low initial price but has a contract designed for unlimited change request triggers.

In contrast, a new approach to modernization driven by 100% automation, provided by companies such as Synchrony Systems, changes the status quo. They offer a highly transparent, efficient, and predictable modernization solution at a fraction of both the price and the risk of the traditional rip-and-replace solutions. Not only does this new approach fit within the shrinking budgets of the public sector, but the process requires little to no internal IT involvement and no end-user retraining once the modernization project is complete.

2. Ask how vendors will preserve the functional equivalence

Your government IT professionals have spent years building systems specialized for your agency, department, or office. The final application was probably developed organically, adding functionality as needed and modified as the needs of the organization changed. Your IT “subject-matter experts” certainly know your systems inside and out, and those systems contain critical functionality to support your agency’s operations.

The challenge with legacy applications is not the functionality but the aging technology that the functionality is built upon. What necessitates the modernization are your maintenance costs, skills shortage, technical requirements imposed by the regulatory compliance changes, and overall inability to provide modern digital experiences to your constituents. The move to modern technology is no longer the debate. The question is whether the modernized system will be one that your IT department can recognize and continue to maintain as efficiently and effectively as it has been to date.

By looking for modernization solutions that focus on the preservation of the original investment into legacy applications, your organization will end up with modernized systems that have equivalent functionality and a recognizable user experience. Therefore, the transition plan to take ownership of the application in a new platform will be more immediate, operationally frictionless, and will have significant cost savings.

3. Understand the potential impact on the user experience

As mentioned before, rewrites or wholesale replacements of mission-critical applications inevitably leave the organization with an entirely different system. In addition to the cost, time, and effort of the traditional rip-and-replace modernization, your IT department would also be required to re-train all the end-users on the new system and update all internal processes and documentation. This hidden cost, which is often quite high, gets overlooked.

User experience (UX) equivalency means that the modernized system would remain recognizable to the end-user and would be 100% equivalent from a usability perspective. One modernization that Synchrony Systems performed was a mainframe application for the New York Police Department. Due to a tight budget, NYPD wanted to avoid any additional retraining that would typically follow a modernization project. Synchrony Systems offered a solution that would mimic exactly the look and feel of the 3270 green screens, but in the modern, native, browser-based technology. The modernized application was delivered within the promised timeframe and budget, without any change requests and, as promised, without any end-user retraining.

Some may argue against having the modernized application look and feel like the dated application, but the benefits are far too great to ignore, especially for the government. These benefits include no end-user retraining for internal or external users; no need to update support, knowledge bases, training manuals, or any other documentation; and no productivity loss because UX equivalency preserves all the known productivity shortcuts already developed by end-users. Only a modernization that guarantees UX equivalency can ensure no disruptions to the government’s operations.

4. Ask vendors how to avoid code freezes

Mission-critical legacy applications are typically in use every day (and sometimes 24/7). More often than not, these systems require frequent code changes to address the numerous changes in regulatory compliance and government operations.

Vendors that offer traditional manual rewrite modernization approaches are forced to impose “code freezes,” i.e., periods of time where no changes can be made to the application. Such is the nature of a wholesale rewrite; for the rewrite to have any chance to complete, the system must remain unchanged while it is in progress. For many organizations, this is simply prohibitive, hence the reason legacy applications remain on aging technology.

The ability to maintain and update the legacy application while it’s being modernized to a new technology entirely changes the dynamics of modernization projects. At Synchrony Systems, we are able to support the coexistence of modernization activities with ongoing development activities without any code freezes. Powered by our Modernization Lifecycle Platform, ongoing new releases of the legacy application are continuously synchronized by replaying all the recorded automation that has taken place up to that point. For companies like SoCalGas, with a proprietary system that had daily pricing changes, the elimination of code freezes was essential.

In reviewing the bids from your RFP, be sure to fully understand if code freezes are a part of the modernization process and how it may impact your organization.

In summary

The move to digital is an opportunity for the government itself to become more agile in its operations and service to its constituents. And, more than any other organization, the government must be completely transparent and ensure continued fiscal responsibility to spend taxpayers’ dollars wisely.

Using these few tips can put your organization on the right path for digital transformation.

The antiquated rip-and-replace and manual rewrite practices of traditional System Integrators are opaque, very expensive, and risky. Synchrony Systems offers a modernization process and platform that is fully transparent and predictable, rooted in technology and automation, and enables us to provide reliable and unchanging fixed prices that do not rely on hidden change-request practices that have been the status quo in this industry. If your organization or agency has this need and is looking for a guaranteed success that is fast, cost-effective, and risk-averse, send us an email or give us a call at (203) 355-3636.

Why UX equivalency matters in modernizations

Mission-critical IT applications that are built in-house have been in development for hundreds of person-years, with many dozens of engineers and testers responsible for their years of maintenance, which would translate to hundreds of millions of dollars. More often than not, the documentation is scarce and inadequate to effectively support and especially to maintain these systems. Yet the users of the system are very proficient and efficient in implementing it. They have developed their own custom shortcuts and tricks for getting their jobs done.

Rewrites or wholesale replacements of the mission-critical application inevitably leave the company with an entirely different system. In addition to the cost, time, and effort needed to replace a legacy system, an IT organization also would be required to retrain the end-users on the new system and replace all the manuals and documentation. This costs the company not only money but precious time.

Retraining the workforce is a big disruption for a business. This is why many modernizations are delayed until the situation turns dire—when the infrastructure will no longer support the system or there isn’t anyone left to maintain it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

What is UX equivalency?

What we mean by user experience (UX) equivalency is that the modernized system would remain recognizable to the end-user and would be 100% equivalent from a usability perspective. With today’s technology, we can take a hosted/mainframe or desktop system and recreate the exact same look, feel, and behavior in a browser.

Similarly, a Windows-based MDI-type GUI application that uses drag and drop, tables, spreadsheets, graphics, modal/modeless dialogs, etc., also can be modernized to work in the browser as an HTML5 Single Page Application (SPA) with equivalent GUI functionality, richness, and presentation semantics. And we can do this without any special browser plug-ins or any desktop deployments. When the user types in a URL, the usability and functionality of their system will remain equivalent inside the browser, with all the benefits of being in a modern programming language and platform.

What are the benefits of UX equivalency?

A pure technologist may argue against having the modernized application look and feel like the dated application, but the business benefits are far too great to ignore. These include:

  • No end-user retraining for internal, external, or even paying customers
  • No need to update support, knowledge bases, training manuals, or any other documentation
  • No need for a massive change management overhaul
  • No degradation in performance; preserves all built-in performance efficiencies developed by engineers over the years
  • No productivity loss; preserves all the known productivity shortcuts already developed by end-users
  • No production release delays; following user acceptance (UAT), a modernized application is ready to go live

Only a modernization that guarantees UX equivalency can ensure no operational disruptions to the business. UX equivalency really focuses on eliminating the hidden costs associated with modernizations.

Hidden costs savings of UX equivalency

These hidden costs of modernizations due to a new UX can be quite staggering, especially if it necessitates retraining a sizable workforce or one that is dispersed worldwide. To illustrate the impact, here’s an example of an enterprise insurance company.

This insurance company had a propriety system that handled all their rating and quoting. Customers would call the company to obtain quotes on their automobile, homeowners, or other insurance, and the agents would enter this information into the system to supply the quotes. In addition, the company also relied on a distribution channel of third-party agents to help drive new business. These third-party agents typically were employed by small insurance companies that also used the system to provide quotes to prospective customers.

In the case of a new UX, this company would need to retrain all of its 10,000 employees on the new system, as well as their external workforce, a network of 20,000 independent insurance agents. Once the company began adding these additional costs, the modernization would become both expensive and disruptive. While this is feasible, the opportunity costs are quite high and the impact on the end-user experience could be overwhelming.

A modernization approach that ensures 100% UX equivalency would prevent the pitfalls described above and allow the entire workforce of 30,000 agents to continue their day-to-day operations with no interruption and little to no impact on the overall business.

UX equivalency helps the developers, too

UX equivalency also is important for the developers who update, modify, and support the modernized application. The learning curve of a modernization application would be limited to only the adoption of a new programming language. Structurally, the source code would remain the same. Any test automation scenarios built over the years would remain unchanged, and the engineers and testers would be able to use them on the target platform. Therefore, developers would be able to smoothly transition to the new platform and apply their domain expertise to further enhance and maintain the system, with minimal impact. Once the modernized application goes live, both the end-users and the developers would remain 100% productive in running and maintaining the modernized system.

Synchrony Systems guarantees 100% UX equivalency in modernizations

Synchrony understands that modernizing a large and complex legacy application can be a major undertaking, fraught with high risk and expense. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our approach and methodology, backed by the power of MLP, accelerate the modernization time-to-value and guarantees functional and UX equivalency. We balance the overall speed, cost, quality, and risk while creating a unified experience, in order to address the inherent complexity of a modernization process in a frictionless and predictable way.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you maintain 100% UX equivalency on your modernization initiative. Your users will thank you!