Slavik Zorin, co-founder & CEO of Synchrony Systems, is a legacy app modernization expert with 30+ years leading complex global projects.
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At some point, most established organizations find themselves lost in what I call the “legacy maze.”
A routine system update breaks an unrelated function. Fixing that issue exposes another dependency no one remembers creating. A modernization roadmap that once looked sensible now stretches years into the future, while the people who truly understand the system are nearing retirement. Progress is slow, risk is high and every turn seems to reveal yet another dead end.
This is rarely a technology failure. It is almost always a leadership one. Legacy applications don’t collapse overnight. They accumulate complexity over decades. By the time executives feel the pain, the organization is already deep inside the maze.
Why modernization so often stalls
Many modernization efforts fail not because leaders underestimate the importance of technology, but because they overestimate how linear the journey will be.
Most core systems in large enterprises were built for a different era: batch processing rather than real-time decisions, stability rather than speed and internal users rather than customers. Over time, these systems were patched, extended and repurposed to meet new regulatory, operational and market demands. Business logic became embedded everywhere, often undocumented. Change one thing, and five others break.
From a leadership perspective, this creates three compounding risks:
• Operational drag: When applications can’t exchange data in real time, organizations compensate with manual workarounds. Decisions slow down. Opportunities are missed. Employees spend their time navigating systems instead of serving customers or improving the business.
• Risk concentration: Critical knowledge often lives in the heads of a shrinking group of specialists. When those employees leave or retire, fragility becomes institutional.
• Strategic paralysis: Leaders know the applications must change, but rip-and-replace feels too risky, too expensive and too disruptive. So modernization becomes a perpetual initiative, constantly funded with no end in sight.
In regulated industries such as financial services and insurance, where compliance deadlines and digital expectations collide, this tension becomes especially acute.
The false promise of a big-bang transformation
One of the most common traps executives fall into is assuming modernization must be all-or-nothing. Replace everything. Re-platform the entire enterprise. Emerge years later, transformed.
In reality, these efforts often stall under their own weight. Timelines stretch. Business requirements change midstream. Patience erodes before meaningful value is delivered.
The fact is that modernization is not an event. It is a managed, staged transformation that must deliver business value along the way.
From maze to map: principles that work
Organizations that successfully escape the legacy maze follow a consistent set of principles:
• Start with value, not systems. Instead of asking, “Which application do we modernize?”, ask, “Which business capabilities matter most right now?” Revenue engines, compliance-critical processes and customer-facing workflows are often the right starting points.
• Preserve what works. Legacy does not mean obsolete. Many older systems encode decades of domain expertise. The goal is not to discard that logic, but to liberate it. Making it more accessible, testable and adaptable.
• Modernize incrementally. Extract high-value functions into modular components that can evolve and be deployed independently without disrupting business operations. This reduces risk while delivering visible progress that creates early wins and builds momentum.
• Make progress measurable. Leaders and teams need to see tangible results. That means faster release cycles, improved user experiences and reduced dependency on scarce skills. These outcomes matter just as much as technical milestones and should be considered key performance indicators.
Using technology as a tool
Modern architectures matter in a modernization journey. But they are a means, not the main objective.
The real goal is alignment with how the business operates. Systems must evolve while the organization continues to serve customers, comply with regulations and compete in the market. Done well, modernization reduces risk over time rather than concentrating it into a single moment.
In practice, this often means running old and new systems side by side, shifting responsibility gradually as confidence grows. User experiences improve incrementally. Teams learn new ways of working without abandoning what already functions.
What executives should ask before starting
Before approving another modernization initiative, senior leaders should ask:
• Will this deliver measurable business value within the first year?
• Can we modernize without betting the company on a single cutover?
• Are we reducing dependency on scarce skills?
• How will we measure progress quarter by quarter?
If the answers are vague, the organization may already be wandering deeper into the maze.
The way out
Legacy systems are not going away and are not embarrassments to hide. They are assets that powered decades of growth.
Escaping the legacy maze doesn’t require heroic rewrites or an overnight transformation. It requires a map: clarity where the value lives, willingness to move in stages and the discipline to modernize without disrupting the business.
For leaders who take that approach, modernization becomes less about a technology project and becomes what it truly is: a strategy for restoring agility, resilience and confidence in the systems that run the enterprise.
This interview with Cynthia Corsetti and Synchrony CEO Slavik Zorin was originally published by Authority Magazine. You can read the original article here.
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Digital transformation has become a crucial component for businesses striving to stay competitive and relevant in today’s rapidly evolving landscape. As technology continues to shape industries and redefine business models, companies must adapt and leverage digital tools and strategies to unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation. In this interview series, we aim to explore various aspects of digital transformation, including best practices, challenges, success stories, and expert insights. We are talking to thought leaders, industry experts, entrepreneurs, technology innovators, and executives who have firsthand experience in driving digital transformation initiatives within their organizations.
As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Slavik Zorin.
Slavik Zorin is CEO & Co-Founder of Synchrony Systems — he is a recognized expert in legacy application modernization with more than 30 years of hands-on experience leading complex projects across financial services, insurance, government, and global enterprises. Slavik is the visionary behind Modernization Lifecycle Management and Synchrony’s Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP). His work enables organizations to transform legacy systems into modern architectures with speed, accuracy, and traceability.
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Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Hi, Cynthia! Thank you for having me today to share my background and discuss the digital transformation space. My company, Synchrony Systems, helps businesses upgrade their old, critical software systems to modern, efficient platforms. We use a combination of automation and AI-assisted tools to ensure the transition is smooth, cost-effective, and minimizes disruption to daily operations.
I often say my entire career has been lived in the before-and-after of software. I started as an independent consultant in the early days of software development, working with a programming language called Smalltalk. This led to a partnership with IBM, where we helped companies move their systems into IBM’s environment. Our first major project in the early 90s showed us the need for automation, and we began developing tools to make these transitions smoother.
As the industry evolved, we had to continually reinvent ourselves, learning each new technology wave. Those experiences ultimately shaped our focus today: orchestrated, low-risk legacy application modernization through our Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP).
In essence, my journey has centered on turning outdated systems into modern, efficient applications that keep businesses moving forward.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Back in the early days of our company in the late 90s/early 2000s, when we were still transitioning from being a pure Smalltalk shop into a modernization and migration firm, I was asked to deliver a highly customized three‑day training course for one of our biggest financial clients at the time. Their chief architect, an incredibly bright and respected leader, had spent years building an advanced new framework for their commercial loan system. My job was to train their engineers how to use it.
Because the material was complex and the timeline was impossibly tight, I pulled multiple all‑nighters building the course and preparing the printed materials. By the time the first day of training arrived, I had been awake far longer than any sane human should have been. And, then it happened. In the middle of delivering the course, right there in front of the client and their entire technical team, I fell asleep. Literally nodded off mid‑session.
Our client, thankfully understanding just how much effort had put into preparing the training, quietly took over the class while I slept… in front of everyone. During a break, I realized what had happened. I sat red‑faced, while the room full of engineers tried politely, and unsuccessfully, not to laugh.
The good news? The training went on and the relationship didn’t just survive. It thrived for years afterward. They even eventually hired us to migrate to the very system they once tried to rewrite themselves. One big takeaway from that experience is that strong relationships can help you weather even the most embarrassing moments.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
From the very beginning, I built this company alongside my wife, Regena, who has been an essential partner in every sense. While I focus on the engineering and technical vision, she oversees the entire business backbone. From running finance, legal, contracting, accounting, and HR, she essentially manages all of the operational infrastructure that keeps us moving forward.
In addition, our Synchrony team is made up of talented engineers and long‑tenured experts. Even as a small company where everyone wears multiple hats, our employees and contractors form a group of highly skilled, engineering‑driven teams that have grown alongside the company’s evolving modernization mission.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
A thinker who had a huge impact on me was author and journalist, Christopher Hitchens. I discovered him by accident through a debate podcast, and I was immediately blown away by his intellect, independence, and clarity of thought. I ended up listening to everything he ever recorded and reading all his books. His ability to stand his ground, think deeply, and communicate honestly has shaped how I approach conversations, decisions, and relationships both personally and in business.
Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
What excites me most right now is the evolution of our Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP). MLP is our proprietary platform designed to help organizations upgrade their old applications in a structured and transparent way. It covers everything from analyzing the current system to transforming the code, testing, and deploying the new system. By standardizing this process and integrating automation, MLP significantly reduces the risks and costs that usually come with modernization projects.
The next evolution of MLP is particularly exciting because it introduces AI-assisted tools to support in the initial modernization readiness assessment phase of the process. The goal is to make modernization something companies can manage confidently, without it being a disruptive, once-a-decade crisis. This evolution empowers businesses to keep up with new technologies and digital demands, all while ensuring their critical systems continue running smoothly behind the scenes.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Digital Transformation. Digital transformation can mean many things to many people, from your perspective, how do you define digital transformation in your industry?
For us, digital transformation means modernizing mission‑critical legacy applications. That means transforming outdated systems into modern, scalable technologies that better support today’s digital business demands. What’s unique to Synchrony is our focus on the core systems the business actually runs on. Many of these systems were built decades ago in languages like Smalltalk, PowerBuilder, EGL, and mainframe environments. Long before Zero Trust security, modern architectures, or continuous delivery existed.
It’s similar to home improvement. You can’t just upgrade the aesthetics — you have to maintain and correct old wiring, plumbing, insulation, and other invisible aspects that keep the home running. When modernization is done correctly, organizations benefit from stronger cybersecurity, more automated compliance, and more interoperability and extensibility that support continuous improvement.
Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?
Any company that is running important business operations on decades-old applications and software will benefit from a digital transformation. Across the globe, this is a frequent issue in financial services, government, insurance, utilities, higher-ed and healthcare sectors. Companies in those industries are often particularly vulnerable to retiring experts, increasing maintenance costs, growing regulatory demands, and systems that are difficult to integrate with modern platforms. Neglecting these systems leads to compounding technical debt that can put your whole enterprise at risk.
Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?
Most companies underestimate the complexity of their legacy systems, and we often see the same issues crop up repeatedly.
One common problem is decision paralysis and delay. Organizations know they need to modernize, but they keep delaying it. Those delays also mean these critical projects often lose internal champions to turnover and attrition, stalling momentum.
Overconfidence in in-house rewrites is another frequent challenge. Many companies underestimate the complexity of modernization and assume their in-house teams can handle it alongside their other responsibility. This leads to multi-year delays, blown budgets and no cohesive plans. Or, similarly, they rely too heavily on AI tools that aren’t equipped to properly handle such an enormous task.
Finally, perhaps the most frustrating challenge we see is when the true cost of technical debt is discovered too late. Deferred maintenance turns the already challenging task of modernization into a cost-prohibitive crisis.
Our platform and approach are specifically designed to address these challenges and help businesses modernize quickly without the disruption to the business that comes from fully rewriting their applications.
Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”? Please share a story or an example for each.
1. Make Legacy Systems Intelligible Before You Touch Them
The biggest mistake companies make is jumping straight into rewriting or replacing systems they don’t fully understand. The first step is always a deep analysis: counting screens, functions, dependencies, integrations, and understanding how the application actually behaves in production. This creates a data-driven foundation for planning.
For example, in our modernization projects, we ingest millions of lines of existing code and generate a complete application inventory. This approach keeps estimates within 20–30% of reality, instead of being off by 300–400% like many manual rewrites.
2. Use Orchestrated, Automated Modernization, Not Risky Rewrites
Manual rewrites are slow, risky, and nearly impossible to estimate accurately. Orchestrated, rules-based automation gives you consistency, traceability, and repeatability. Our tools function like compilers: we take legacy code as input and generate modernized equivalents, reducing both cost and risk.
For instance, our earliest work with IBM on Smalltalk migrations taught us this valuable lesson. By building migration tools instead of relying on manual rewrites, IBM was able to resell our software for large projects where automation dramatically reduced project timelines and improved predictability. They built over a $100 million modernization business that our technical solutions were a part of.
3. Modernize What Matters — And Keep In Mind, Not Everything Matters
Not all legacy logic is bad. Some should be preserved, some refactored, and some removed entirely. Selective modernization minimizes disruption while maximizing ROI. It focuses effort on the parts of the system that matter most to the business.
For instance, applying Pareto’s Principle often reveals that roughly 20% of an application delivers 80% of its business value. By modernizing that high‑impact portion first, organizations can deliver results faster, reduce risk, and avoid rewriting low‑value areas. This targeted approach creates early wins by modernizing a heavily used functionality without taking on the full cost and complexity of modernizing the entire system at once.
4. Adopt Continuous Modernization to Control Technical Debt
Instead of waiting until systems become dangerously outdated, organizations should integrate incremental updates into their regular development workflow. Continuous Modernization (CM) reduces upgrade complexity, improves security, and prevents technical debt from snowballing.
To illustrate, in the CM model, upgrades run in isolated branches and are automatically tested. Issues are caught early, when they’re smaller and less expensive, rather than discovered years later when outdated dependencies force a massive overhaul. This approach can extend the lifespan of mission-critical systems while keeping costs predictable.
5. Treat Security as an Architectural Outcome, Not a Patch Job
Legacy systems were never designed for Zero Trust security, identity-centric access, or real-time observability. Modernization makes systems visible, traceable, and structurally capable of continuous security and compliance. You can’t secure what you can’t see.
Consider the following example. We work with companies to modernize legacy platforms that have become opaque and tightly coupled. By moving to service‑based architectures with clear trust boundaries and least‑privilege access, they shift from reactive patching to security that’s engineered, validated, and auditable.
In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?
A culture of innovation starts with accepting a simple reality that today’s modern system is tomorrow’s legacy. If teams focus on this mission, innovation becomes a continuous discipline rather than a one-time initiative.
From our experience, companies innovate best when they treat modernization like engineering and not improvising. This means transparent workflows, measurable progress, clear architecture, and tools that help teams understand their systems. Our platform makes all modernization activity visible, from test results to automation runs, to defect patterns, which encourages learning and faster iteration.
Innovation thrives when teams feel empowered to evolve systems continuously, supported by data, tooling, and processes that reduce risk and uncertainty.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
A quote I often come back to is: “Today’s state of the art system is tomorrow’s legacy.”
After 30 years in this field, I’ve seen every modern platform eventually become the next modernization challenge: Smalltalk, EGL, PowerBuilder, and early Java frameworks. That reality shaped my entire career. It taught me to treat modernization as something continuous and engineered, not a one-time event. It’s why we built structured tools, automation, and ultimately a full Modernization Lifecycle Platform to help organizations evolve without losing the functionality and the underlying value embedded in their systems. For me, this quote is a reminder to stay adaptable. No matter how advanced a system looks today, it will eventually be tomorrow’s legacy system.
How can our readers further follow your work?
You can follow me on LinkedIn and also go to sync-sys.com and visit our blog to learn more about Application Modernization and the digital transformation.
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
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About The Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is a CEO and Executive Coach. She is the founder of CC consulting and the host of the podcast, “The Only CEO”. Cynthia has been featured in numerous publications and has been a guest on dozens of podcasts and radio shows. Cynthia helps CEO’s and other c-suite executives to increase their impact, influence, and productivity. She helps clients develop a clear vision, strategy, and roadmap to achieve their goals. Her clients include both new and experienced leaders, as well as those transitioning to new roles. Cynthia holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a certified coach and a member of the International Coach Federation.
Migrating to a cloud-native architecture is one of the most powerful ways to improve business agility. The modern cloud delivers virtually unlimited, on-demand compute power, enabling platforms to scale instantly to meet demand. It’s no surprise that 94% of companies worldwide already use cloud computing in some capacity, and 97% of IT leaders plan to expand their cloud systems in the next few years (source).
Yet many enterprises remain constrained by legacy, monolithic applications. These systems hold critical business logic but act as bottlenecks to digital transformation. Insurance applications, banking platforms, and other unique software systems have been built over the course of decades in languages like PowerBuilder, EGL, and Smalltalk, among others. These types of systems require a flexible, customizable, scalable, and agile modernization process that can be easily jump-started to deliver incremental results.
But how can you untangle a complex monolith without disrupting stable functionality and critical business operations? After all, carving out pieces of a monolithic system is a manual, labor-intensive, and time-consuming process. To move forward in today’s climate, organizations need a controlled, automated approach that ensures critical functions can be safely modernized, tested, and deployed in a timely manner.
The optimal solution lies in a more modern architecture built on microservices and micro-frontends. Microservices are a web of independent, modular components that can be scaled, updated, and reused individually. Micro-frontends are user-facing components that can operate either independently or as a cohesive whole.
Modernizing the front end is just as important as modernizing straight business logic. Forrester Research finds that companies investing in UI/UX design see a $100 return for every $1 spent. Outdated interfaces remain one of the most immediate barriers for legacy applications, and micro-frontends directly address this need.
Synchrony Systems’ Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP) comes equipped with end-to-end automation for extracting “subsets” of business logic and user interface, and transforming them into reusable components for microservices and micro-frontends. This enables organizations to modernize their monolithic legacy applications into a hyperscale cloud architecture. By focusing on the high-value business functionality first, Synchrony helps accelerate modernization timelines so enterprises can deploy and test migrated functions and complete features continuously in months instead of years.
The illustration below shows how MLP orchestrates a modernization solution from a PowerBuilder monolithic architecture to a target microarchitecture with a TypedScript/React frontend and a TypedScript/Node.js backend as the target programming languages. (click image to enlarge)
How monoliths become microservices and micro-frontends
Rather than migrating monolithic legacy codebases wholesale or “as-is,” Synchrony offers a technology-assisted reengineering process and workflow that is iterative, incremental, and analysis-driven.
Analytics and application rationalization
First, an exhaustive analytical inspection of your legacy application is performed using modernization technology purpose-built to identify and extract high-value business scenarios and their execution paths. This analysis produces targeted, self-contained components (a.k.a. “subsets”) for every identified business scenario embedded inside each monolithic codebase. This extraction acts as the foundation for exposing the hidden application “component vocabulary” in terms of application layers, subsystems, and business functions. Powered by the newly exposed knowledge of your system, the extracted component architecture becomes the stepping stone that drives continuous and incremental modernization toward the target cloud component architecture.
Target architecture metadata harness
The new application component architecture is the first representation and visualization of the formerly monolithic application’s structural decomposition into a granular micro-frontend/microservice layer. The component model is used for generating the required metadata that drives the execution of every modernization service agent, such as: a) data access generation; b) business objects generation; and c) UI facelift generation into a reactive frontend. This is where client-specific requirements are also incorporated to align with IT’s model target architecture.
Fine-tuning the transformation engine
The breakdown of subsets further undergoes an iterative process that identifies micro-frontends, microservices, and common layers used by both. An interactive process identifies UI/UX requirements and service layer requirements (typically slated for data access) to produce highly granular, reusable, and scalable components on the target. The process results in custom-tailored code refactoring, transformation, and generation, rules knowledgebases (KBs) for target business services, and facelift rules for a modern, reactive target web frontend.
Orchestrating modernization workflows
The analytics, metadata harness, and fine-tuned transformation knowledgebase are all assembled into custom-tailored workflows. When executed end-to-end, they produce the desired target architecture, consisting of hundreds and often thousands of structural (repositories) and microarchitectural (microservices and micro-frontends) components. Workflows can be invoked on demand by users or triggered by specific events, such as commits to newly generated code or updates to the metadata harness or KB. The holistic integration of code, tools, and processes ensures that the modernization project runs efficiently and at scale.
Continuous modernization
All units of execution inside a workflow, known as “autoflows,” can be thought of as pipelines of pipelines that enable continuous execution of the entire modernization lifecycle. The original monolithic application architecture is incrementally decomposed into independent, atomic, and stateless microservices and self-contained, reusable micro-frontends, ready for deployment into IT-specific cloud environments. The result is a transformed application with cloud-native architecture and modern UI/UX, preserving the original business logic and retaining 100% functional equivalence.
The illustration below shows an end-to-end customized MLP modernization workflow for monolithic client/server desktop applications. (click image to enlarge)
Why modernizing to microservices and micro-frontends improves speed and agility
Customers can continuously extract high-value functionality and features from their legacy applications at their own pace and timeframe, until everything is modernized.
Eliminating dead code and breaking the monolithic functionality into a web of independent microarchitecture components eliminates technical debt and fosters technological agility.
Legacy applications get fully transformed into modern target architectures, unlike the like-for-like, “as-is” transformations that preserve the legacy architectural semantics, making it hard to be agile and scalable on modern target platforms.
Microservices and micro-frontends are delivered incrementally as early milestones for customers to test and deploy into production piecemeal, rather than waiting for the entire application to be modernized.
Built for flexibility and adaptation, Synchrony’s modernization platform conforms to the customer’s specific target architecture, tooling, and requirements (e.g., RESTful, Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, API gateway, widget libraries, data access harnesses, etc.) rather than dictating a standardized solution.
Real-world transformation: from monoliths to microarchitectures
Modernizing monolithic application architectures into microarchitectures enables companies to untangle decades of core domain functionality and extract it into highly reusable components. Synchrony has helped dozens of teams extract and transform critical domain functionality and UI from their legacy client/server or host/mainframe monolithic architectures into reusable target microarchitectures.
PowerBuilder
A PowerBuilder client/server application subset (after removing dead code and selecting the initial set of high-value components) with a traditional monolithic architecture:
Windows → 323
Data Windows → 1,908
Lines of Code (LOC) → 416K
Yields the following cloud microarchitecture:
Micro-frontends → 47
Microservices → 488
Repositories → 1,650
Would you like to learn how this could be applied to your in-house legacy applications?
Contact us to meet with our senior modernization specialists for an in-depth conversation and consultation about the target architecture options your in-house portfolio of legacy applications can take.
Microarchitecture in legacy application modernization FAQ
This FAQ addresses common questions about our technology, drawing from our expertise in modernization. Whether you’re a developer, architect, or CTO, these insights can help you understand how to revitalize your tech stack without disrupting operations.
What is microservices extraction in legacy application modernization?
Synchrony Systems’ Microservices Extraction technology is an automated tool that untangles complex legacy monoliths and converts them into a network of reusable microservices and microfrontends. It focuses on extracting subsets of business logic and user interfaces from languages such as PowerBuilder, EGL, and Smalltalk. This process creates independent, modular components that can be scaled, updated, and deployed individually in a cloud-native environment, such as TypeScript/React for frontends and TypeScript/Node.js for backends.
Why should enterprises modernize legacy applications into microarchitectures?
Legacy applications are, by definition, outdated. They are built on aging infrastructure and rely on a talent pool nearing retirement to keep running. These systems inherently limit scalability, agility, and innovation. By modernizing to microservices and micro-frontends, organizations can leverage the cloud’s on-demand compute power, enabling instant scaling to meet demand. This shift eliminates technical debt, fosters technological agility, and allows for incremental improvements without a full overhaul.
How does Synchrony Systems’ platform differ from traditional modernization approaches?
Traditional methods often involve manual, labor-intensive processes or “as-is” migrations that preserve outdated semantics, making it hard to achieve true agility. Synchrony’s platform uses end-to-end automation for an iterative, incremental, analysis-driven reengineering process. It avoids wholesale migrations by focusing on high-value business scenarios first, delivering functional equivalents in months rather than years. The result is a hyperscale cloud architecture tailored to your specific requirements, including RESTful services, Kubernetes, and custom API gateways.
What are microservices and micro-frontends, and why are they important?
Microservices are independent, modular backend components that handle specific business functions, allowing them to be scaled, updated, or reused without affecting the entire system. Microfrontends are user-facing UI components that can operate standalone or integrate seamlessly. Together, they create a flexible “web” of components that improve speed, reusability, and overall application performance.
What is Synchrony’s step-by-step process for microservices extraction?
The process is built into the Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP) and includes several key phases:
Analytics and application rationalization: An exhaustive analysis identifies high-value business scenarios and extracts self-contained components, revealing the application’s hidden “component vocabulary” across layers, subsystems, and functions.
Target architecture metadata harness: This generates metadata to drive modernization agents, incorporating client-specific requirements for data access, business objects, and reactive UI generation.
Fine-tuning the transformation engine: Subsets are broken down into granular micro-frontends and microservices. An interactive process refines UI/UX and service layer needs, creating custom refactoring rules and knowledgebases.
Orchestrating modernization workflows: Analytics, metadata, and transformation rules are assembled into custom workflows that produce structural repositories and microarchitectural components. These can be triggered on demand or by events like code commits.
Continuous modernization: Workflows run as “autoflows” (pipelines of pipelines), incrementally decomposing the monolith into atomic, stateless components ready for cloud deployment. The final output is a fully transformed application that preserves business logic and is 100% functionally equivalent.
If the modernization process is automated, how does it ensure safety?
Synchrony’s MLP emphasizes controlled automation to avoid disrupting stable functionality. It uses purpose-built technology for inspection, extraction, and transformation, ensuring critical functions are modernized, tested, and deployed safely and accurately. Automation handles the heavy lifting, but the process includes iterative fine-tuning and interactive elements to incorporate your team’s input throughout the modernization process, minimizing risks and maintaining operational continuity.
Can modernization be done incrementally without a big-bang approach?
Absolutely. MLP enables continuous extraction of high-value functionality at your own pace. Microservices and microfrontends are delivered as early milestones, enabling testing and piecemeal production deployment. This eliminates the need to wait for the entire application to be modernized, reducing downtime and accelerating timelines from years to months.
What benefits does this technology provide in terms of speed and agility?
Reduced technical debt: Breaks down monoliths into independent components, eliminating dead code and enabling easier updates.
Improved scalability and flexibility: Components conform to your target architecture (e.g., cloud infrastructure, widget libraries), fostering reuse across teams.
Faster time-to-market: Incremental deployments mean quicker value realization from high-priority features.
Improved UI/UX: Transforms outdated interfaces into modern, reactive frontends, enhancing user experience and ROI.
Full transformation: Unlike “as-is” methods, it delivers a truly cloud-native architecture for long-term agility.
Which legacy languages and systems does Synchrony support?
MLP is designed for a variety of legacy systems, including client/server desktop applications written in languages such as PowerBuilder, EGL, Smalltalk, VisualGen, COBOL, and more. It’s flexible and customizable, able to handle unique monolithic architectures across insurance, banking, and other industries.
How can I get started with Synchrony Systems’ Microservices Extraction technology?
Contact us to connect with our senior modernization specialists.
Modernization promises the benefits of a modern, cloud-based tech stack, including remaining competitive, innovating quickly, supporting mobile, and reducing security risks. Yet app modernization initiatives are fraught with complexity. Sadly, over 75% of modernization projects fail, according to multiple studies conducted on mainframe and application modernizations.
Executives, architects, and technical teams must be aware of the warning signs that a modernization project is starting to go sideways. Here are ten app modernization mistakes to avoid to increase your chances of a successful initiative.
1. Shortcutting modernization readiness homework
The devil is in the details regarding app modernization. While limited documentation, technology expertise, or even historical context for changes in the legacy application are common problems, the more significant risk with application modernizations is the inability to scope the project properly. Making assumptions rather than conducting an actual modernization readiness assessment often leads to underestimating the size and complexity of the technical debt and, hence, the overall effort required for the modernization. As a result, the project is set up for failure before it even begins.
2. Treating application modernization like a typical software development project
Nothing could be further from the truth. These applications typically run critical parts of the business, and modernization efforts must be managed in parallel to support the day-to-day business operations. Unlike the typical greenfield development lifecycle, where many engineers make many small incremental changes to one program or function at a time, a modernization project makes wholesale changes to millions of lines of code simultaneously and repeatedly. Planning a modernization project like a greenfield project is a huge mistake.
3. Assuming a good migration tool is the only key to a successful modernization
Machine-driven migration tools are crucial to modernization projects, but they are just a part of a successful modernization project. 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. So yes, we need good migration tools. Still, they must be integrated into holistic modernization processes that help bring migrated code to production quality, see it through to production release, and retire the legacy application.
4. Overreliance on code migration tools
Piggybacking on the above, teams always investigate the available code migration tools. Automated code transformation takes care of only a third of the work in a complex modernization project with many moving parts and stakeholders. Without integration of migration tools with CI/CD build pipelines, defect management, test management, code synchronization between parallel development and migration tracks, project management, analytics, reporting, and more, it will be impossible to successfully manage such complex projects and see them through to completion.
5. Underestimating the difficulty of modernizing a moving target
Applications that require modernization are often live/running systems that undergo development – bug fixes, enhancements, feature requests, integrations, etc. – based on the needs of the business. Halting development or freezing the application code isn’t feasible, especially when today’s modernization projects average sixteen to twenty-four months or more. The biggest Achilles heel of modernization is the inability to keep up with the rate of change happening to the application while it’s undergoing modernization.
6. Trying to modernize everything at the same time
The end-state is clear. A modernized application will use modern technology, be cloud- and mobile-ready, and embrace current UI/UX best practices. However, the system to be modernized is typically monolithic and was developed with what today would be considered obsolete software development practices. Trying to tackle this challenge all at once significantly increases the risk of failure as it drives up the demand on resources, time, and costs and ultimately erodes the trust of senior executives and project sponsors. Instead, develop a minimal viable product, or MVP, modernization roadmap. An incremental approach will still result in wholesale modernization, but it’s being done piecemeal. This incremental approach makes modernization more manageable, trackable, and measurable and de-risks the entire project.
7. Not having project visibility
Large-scale, complex application modernizations often require internal resources and several external partners with specific migration expertise. The work is usually managed via spreadsheets, Gantt charts, project management or collaboration tools, and constant status calls. Outside the project management activity, the modernization work occurs in various development environments siloed to the teams working in their particular areas. So, despite everyone’s best intentions, modernizations are fraught with miscommunication, delays, and project bloat, costing more money and time. These challenges must be acknowledged and addressed as part of the overall modernization strategy and, where possible, solved with modernization lifecycle management solutions.
8. Tracking the wrong modernization success metrics
Some metrics show project progress but may not be success indicators. For example, measuring the number of migrated lines of code or how much code compiles doesn’t mean the code is actually running. Additional metrics that track the progress of the modernization are how much code is executing or code coverage, the impact of a new version of a code drop, and the overall project trends.
9. Claiming victory too early
Once the modernized application is in production, it’s tempting to sunset the legacy application as quickly as possible. After all, maintaining legacy applications takes resources that could be deployed on other strategic initiatives. However, the modernized application must be exercised in production for enough time to ensure that the migrated code operates as expected in the day-to-day operations. Sunsetting the application too early prevents a quick remigration using updated automation rules and instead forces a development team to prioritize, schedule, and address these issues manually during a development sprint.
10. Ignoring employee impact
Modernization is more than technology. It often triggers a fundamental shift in development processes and team organization, with many companies adopting DevOps principles, cloud deployment, and modern development best practices. It’s a sea change for the developers who are maintaining the legacy application. Therefore, it is essential to consider and plan for the impact on employees post-modernization.
About Synchrony Systems and our app modernization technology
We have reimagined how application modernizations are executed. Our technology has helped some of the world’s largest brands with assessments, readiness analyses, roadmaps, application migrations, and application transformations. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.
Every enterprise operates with some degree of tech debt. With millions of lines of legacy code powering critical operations, tech debt is inevitable—eventually, all code becomes outdated. While tech debt isn’t inherently “bad,” it can limit an enterprise’s ability to adapt, innovate, and remain competitive.Addressing tech debt isn’t just about identifying issues; it’s about managing them across an enterprise modernization initiative with orchestration, insight, and accountability. That’s where platforms like MLP (Modernization Lifecycle Platform) become essential.
AI-powered modernization solutions offer advanced capabilities to enhance the assessment and management of tech debt, such as:
Automated code analysis
AI-powered tools can automatically analyze codebases to detect code smells, architectural issues, and other indicators of tech debt. For example, CodeScene uses machine learning algorithms to identify patterns in version control data, highlighting hotspots, i.e., code areas frequently modified and may require attention. This behavioral code analysis helps prioritize tech debt mitigation efforts.
Predictive maintenance
AI can predict which parts of the code will likely cause future issues by analyzing historical data and code evolution patterns. This foresight enables teams to proactively address potential problems before they escalate, effectively managing tech debt.
Prioritization of refactoring efforts
AI can assess the impact of tech debt on various aspects of software performance and maintainability, helping teams prioritize refactoring efforts based on factors like code complexity, defect density, and contribution to business goals. Tools like NDepend provide metrics and visualizations that assist in understanding and managing tech debt within .NET applications.
Estimation of remediation costs
AI can estimate the effort required to address specific tech debt items, enabling better planning and resource allocation. The SQALE method, for instance, offers a framework for assessing source code quality and estimating the remediation costs associated with tech debt.
Continuous monitoring and reporting
AI-driven tools can continuously monitor codebases for new tech debt instances, providing developers real-time feedback. This continuous integration ensures that tech debt is managed proactively, preventing its accumulation over time.
These AI capabilities are most effective when deployed within a unified modernization framework. MLP provides the end-to-end infrastructure to integrate AI into each phase of tech debt remediation, from initial discovery and impact assessment to automated code transformation and final validation. By embedding AI tooling into the MLP workflow, organizations can move beyond static analysis to execute modernization plans with measurable outcomes and full traceability.
Platforms like MLP make this integration actionable by supporting AI-assisted analysis and rule-based automation across diverse environments, including mainframe, midrange, and distributed systems. MLP’s ability to coordinate modernization assets, automate repetitive tasks, and generate audit trails gives enterprises a practical path to address tech debt while aligning modernization efforts with business priorities.
By integrating AI into the software development lifecycle, organizations can significantly enhance their ability to identify, assess, and manage tech debt. This will lead to more maintainable codebases, efficient development processes, and a stronger foundation for future innovation.
Finding IT professionals with the expertise to maintain business-critical legacy applications is becoming increasingly difficult. As experienced programmers in legacy languages retire, a widening skills gap emerges, leaving organizations struggling to support essential systems. Industries such as banking, insurance, and government, which have long depended on in-house mainframe or client/server applications, are feeling this shortage most acutely.
The loss of institutional knowledge
As Baby Boomers retire, their institutional knowledge about maintaining and troubleshooting these systems leaves with them. When a software crash, security breach, or routine feature update arises, the shrinking pool of legacy system experts poses a significant risk to IT operations and business continuity.
Younger generations of developers, including Millennials and Gen Z, were never trained on mainframe systems, do not code in legacy programming languages, and generally have little interest in learning outdated technologies. They focus on modern tech trends, leaving legacy systems further neglected.
British Airways’ IT meltdown: a recent example
A recent illustration of the challenges posed by legacy systems is British Airways’ global IT meltdown just this past December. The 95-minute outage left passengers unable to check in online and delayed flights, as pilots couldn’t process vital “load sheets,” causing aircraft to remain on the tarmac. The airline is currently investing £750 million in a three-year IT upgrade to prevent future incidents, aiming to shift its legacy data centers onto a more reliable cloud-based platform.
The skills gap extends beyond COBOL and the mainframe
While COBOL is often cited as the poster child of legacy languages, the skills shortage affects many other aging programming languages that enterprises still rely on. These include:
EGL
PowerBuilder
Smalltalk
Assembler
CA/Gen
C/C++
Ideal
Natural
Pascal/Delphi
PL/I
RPG
Many enterprises continue to rely on these languages, which are deeply embedded in their operations. For example, Fortran is still prevalent in scientific computing, weather forecasting, and engineering applications. Pascal and Delphi Object Pascal persist in niche commercial applications, while Smalltalk is used in some banks, insurance companies, and utilities.
Beyond the skills shortage, legacy systems introduce significant technical debt, making modernization efforts difficult. These outdated platforms hinder cloud integration, mobile app development, and the adoption of AI and Big Data solutions. Additionally, legacy code increases cybersecurity vulnerabilities, exposing businesses to potential breaches.
Addressing the skills gap
For organizations dependent on legacy systems, there are three primary approaches to mitigating the skills shortage: retaining legacy programmers, training new professionals, or modernizing technology.
1. Temporary Band-Aid: retaining and training
A short-term solution is to keep legacy programmers on board longer or incentivize younger professionals to learn legacy technologies. However, this approach requires financial incentives and comprehensive training programs. Some companies have launched apprenticeship initiatives, recruiting young IT talent and providing them with training in both legacy and modern technologies.
2. A better fix: prioritizing modernization
While training new programmers in old languages can temporarily plug the skills gap, it does not eliminate the risks associated with aging systems. Analysts widely recommend that enterprises invest in modernization. According to Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Andy Rowsell-Jones, IT departments spend up to 75% of their budgets maintaining legacy systems. Redirecting these resources toward modernization could foster innovation and business growth.
3. The best solution: microservices extraction for rapid modernization
A full-scale modernization effort can take years, but organizations need solutions now. A highly effective approach is microservices extraction, which allows businesses to modernize critical functions without overhauling entire systems. Unlike traditional modernization, which requires rewriting or replacing an entire application, microservices extraction identifies and migrates only essential business functions, eliminating redundant code and reducing risk.
Conclusion
Organizations still relying on legacy applications built with obsolete programming languages face mounting risks. These systems limit cloud and mobile capabilities, restrict advanced analytics and AI adoption, and present security vulnerabilities. Additionally, as skilled programmers retire and younger developers avoid outdated technologies, businesses struggle to maintain mission-critical applications.
The best way forward is modernization with microservices extraction, allowing enterprises to retain essential functionality while shedding technical debt. This approach accelerates digital transformation, optimizes IT resources, and minimizes business disruption, making it the superior solution for the legacy skills crisis.
This FAQ summarizes how parcIT saved seven years by modernizing Smalltalk applications to Java with Synchrony Systems. The in-depth, 24-page report is available here.
1. Why did parcIT decide to migrate its Smalltalk applications to Java?
parcIT’s shift from Smalltalk to Java wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was a strategic move influenced by several pivotal factors:
Industry trends: The software world was moving away from Smalltalk, making it harder to find skilled developers to maintain and enhance Smalltalk systems.
Customer perception: Customers started viewing Smalltalk as a relic of the past, hurting brands of forward-thinking companies.
Maintenance challenges: These were twofold. First, the general maintenance and support burden on a handful of remaining Smalltalk developers of the large and still growing Smalltalk codebase. Second, the increased complexity of the software needing to interoperate with newer product features being developed in Java.
2. What hurdles did parcIT encounter during the migration to Java?
The journey wasn’t without its fair share of bumps:
Dynamic vs. static typing: Smalltalk’s dynamic typing posed challenges when mapping it to Java’s static type system.
Paradigm shifts: The “everything is an object” principle in Smalltalk, which includes primitive types, the 0-based vs. 1-based indexing of collections, full block closures vs. restricted lambda functions, and more, required a nuanced approach when translated into Java to produce maintainable software.
Reflection and extensions: Smalltalk’s heavy reliance on reflection and base-class extensions didn’t have direct Java counterparts, requiring a more comprehensive transformation to a first-class alternative implementation.
Framework gaps: Ensuring Java frameworks could effectively replicate Smalltalk’s core functionalities was no small feat, especially as it pertained to Smalltalk’s extensive Collection base-class library.
3. Why partner with Synchrony Systems for this modernization?
parcIT undertook an internal rewrite that was taking way too long. This made them realize they needed to find a vendor they could partner with to accelerate and, at the same time, de-risk the modernization. Key reasons for choosing Synchrony were:
Smalltalk know-how: Synchrony’s deep expertise in Smalltalk, especially with migrating complex Smalltalk applications to a variety of different targets, was pivotal.
Advanced tools: Synchrony’s Smalltalk Migration Technology (SMT) came loaded with features like static type inferencing, runtime type instrumentation, deep analytics, rule-based refactoring and code generation, and much more, making it a key differentiator in partner selection.
Collaborative spirit: Synchrony adapted its process to allow for parcIT’s active participation and control, addressing a key requirement.
Cloud advantage: Synchrony provided a dedicated AWS cloud environment to manage the entire modernization lifecycle.
4. How was the project structured to ensure success?
Success didn’t happen by chance—it was a result of meticulous planning:
Readiness phase: This included a comprehensive Smalltalk source code analysis, platform dependency analysis, component interdependency, diagnostics, and challenge identification, all of which were used to build a project plan.
Clear task division: Responsibilities were clearly split between parcIT and Synchrony, with parcIT developing a Java UI Compatibility Library (CL).
Team collaboration: A robust workflow ensured smooth interactions between the teams.
Parallel tracks: By handling headless and GUI application migrations simultaneously, the process was streamlined, and early testing of migrated functionality was made possible.
Continuous monitoring: Real-time tracking and metrics allowed for swift tactical and strategic adjustments, keeping the project on track and moving forward.
5. What strategies and tools helped overcome the technical challenges?
parcIT and Synchrony employed several smart strategies:
Static type inferencing: SMT’s engine minimized manual annotations by automatically inferring static types.
Runtime-Type Instrumentation: This tool boosted the accuracy of the static-type inferencing process.
Refactoring base-class extensions: SMT refactored extensions into a separate first-class extensions framework, ensuring Java compatibility and maintainability.
Custom code generation: The SMT rule-based knowledgebase (KB) facilitated precise, flexible, customizable, and efficient code transformation.
Migration subsets: Breaking down the codebase into smaller units made the migration easier to manage and test.
6. What were the key takeaways from the modernization?
parcIT learned several valuable lessons:
Collaboration pays off: Active team involvement led to higher code quality and a smoother transition of migrated Java code ownership.
Front-loaded effort: The initial stages, especially static-type inferencing, required significant upfront effort.
Continuous improvement: Regular updates to the migration tools were crucial for success.
Impact analysis: Careful evaluation of potential scope changes during the project was essential.
7. What benefits did parcIT reap from the modernization?
The migration brought about numerous advantages:
No more legacy issues: The previous Smalltalk challenges were eliminated with the switch to Java.
Faster completion: Automation significantly reduced the time needed to complete the modernization compared to a manual rewrite.
Easier maintainability: The new Java codebase made it easier to integrate with internal Java applications, making the software easier to scale and adapt for future needs.
Enhanced perception: Offering solutions on a modern platform improved parcIT’s competitive advantage.
8. How did parcIT optimize the migrated codebase post-modernization?
Post-migration, parcIT focused on fine-tuning:
Reducing reflection: Incrementally cutting down reflection usage improved performance and maintainability.
Minimizing type casting: Addressing type casting instances made the code more readable and reduced potential runtime errors.
Performance tweaks: They optimized Compatibility Library (CL) APIs to eliminate performance bottlenecks.
Through a combination of strategic planning, collaboration, and innovative tools, parcIT successfully navigated the complex journey from Smalltalk to Java, setting itself up for a more agile and sustainable future.
PowerBuilder is best known for its rapid application development (RAD) capabilities, particularly for building data-driven client/server business applications. It’s estimated that billions of lines of PowerBuilder code are running applications in North America alone, let alone globally.
PowerBuilder is considered to be a 4GL language. Key features of 4GL are a higher level of programming abstraction that is then used to generate the code into a lower-level language such as C or C++ and extensive components embedded into the language itself or its built-in system library. PowerBuilder is more of the latter than the former. Its WYSIWYG IDE with its event-driven programming model and all-in-one DataWindow presentation with powerful yet simplified data access CRUD capability, including sorting, filtering, computed fields, reporting, and other capabilities, is what gave it its claim to fame in its heyday.
Today, companies are looking to transform these applications to web and cloud environments to reap the benefits of their ubiquity, scalability, and global adoption. But what are the actual challenges of taking working, bespoke production applications written in PowerBuilder and transforming them into modern stateless microfrontends and microservices web architectures deployed in secure and scalable cloud platforms? Our modernization experts share some of the critical technical challenges teams face when undertaking such an endeavor.
Challenges modernizing PowerBuilder applications
Architectural differences
Generally speaking, PowerBuilder applications use a client-server architecture where the client handles much of the business logic and the server manages database access. Web applications, on the other hand, follow a more distributed architecture, often involving web servers, application servers, and browser-based web clients.
Splitting a monolith, especially a client-server, standalone, stateful monolith, into a web architecture is not for the lighthearted. Key challenges are:
Refactoring and decoupling presentation layout and logic from the underlying business model and logic.
Extracting application services into the web server tier and replacing direct access with REST calls.
Identifying interdependencies, interwoven user interfaces, and business logic and properly splitting it to work in the web tier.
Removing dependencies on stateful data access, such as open cursors and long transactions.
Last but not least, re-implementing the decades-old reliable software in new, and often multiple, new modern programming languages.
General code migration challenges
Modern web applications often use frameworks such as Angular, React, or Vue.js. Integrating the PowerBuilder business logic and data access layers with these frameworks requires significant refactoring and a very heavy lift in the absence of automation and refactoring tools. While dealing with a single PowerBuilder language, often target architecture requires multiple languages – JavaScript on the client and/or Java or C# on the server. In addition, PowerBuilder uses its own scripting language, providing additional capabilities for manipulating data retrieved from databases that may require a complete redo or an equivalent custom interpreter that will implement the equivalent semantics and functionality on the web.
Type safety and validation
PowerBuilder’s dynamic data typing allows flexibility but can lead to runtime errors. Migrating to a statically typed language involves enforcing type safety throughout the application, requiring an upfront investment in defining interfaces, types, and classes for consistent data handling and error prevention. Validation is often embedded inside the DataWindow objects and must be shifted to a mid-tier or form validation in the browser.
User Interface (UI) transition
PowerBuilder applications use a desktop-style UI with windows and dialogs that don’t naturally translate to a reactive web layout, especially for DataWindow 4GL-like components. Web frontend frameworks such as React offer rich UI components. Still, those components do not have all the equivalent properties and presentation semantics offered by the PowerBuilder’s rich set of controls and visual components and certainly do not provide a DataWindow equivalent functionality. If a like-for-like outcome is chosen, an initial step of modernizing a PowerBuilder application will require an equivalent DataWindow compatibility component framework to be implemented in the target web UI framework. For a more comprehensive modernization with the objective of achieving a native web UI/UX target, a more granular approach is necessary to break down the underlying data window-dependent behavior into separate independent pieces of display/presentation behavior, corresponding data access and data binding, and reporting capabilities.
Data access
The DataWindow is the PowerBuilder superpower. Its abstraction includes presentation (drawing and displaying forms that can have both simple and complex widgets), data access that includes SQL or stored procedure invocation, data binding, and transactions. A more comprehensive approach is needed to achieve functional equivalence on the web target with a smart, well-integrated compatibility library that sits on top of existing frameworks such as React or Angular. Adapting the data access layer to work with web technologies involves changes in how database connections are managed. The main challenge is the proverbial “thin-client” architecture, which implies statelessness. It’s not just that we are using different technologies for session management, connection pooling, etc.; the underlying transformation of the monolith into a microservices and microfrontends web and cloud architecture is where the real challenge lies.
Session management paradigm shift
PowerBuilder applications often rely on the session state maintained within the client application. In a modern web application, managing the client state requires technologies like Redux or another persistent data store on the browser side. Moving from a primarily client-side state management model to a distributed client-server architecture requires careful consideration of data synchronization. Depending on the application’s needs, data consistency and responsiveness are often achieved using REST APIs or WebSockets.
Performance
Whether the application is modernized for the web or built ground up for the web, it comes with the web territory of potential network latency in user response times and scalability depending on the demands of the underlying application profile. When modernizing a client-server architecture to the web, there is also the risk of potential consequential database “chattiness.” Once the application has achieved functional equivalence, attention must be placed on performance, overall application deployment, and scalability.
Security
There are differences in security practices for client-server applications and web applications. One of the most challenging parts of a PowerBuilder modernization to the web is extracting the application logic and, most importantly, the data access in the form of SQL and stored procedure calls to a web service layer. Once successfully split, other security layers, such as secure authentication (e.g., MFA, SSO), authorization protocols (e.g., OAuth, SAML, JWT), and data encryption and secure transmission (e.g., HTTPS), become more straightforward.
Overcoming these challenges
Addressing these challenges requires careful planning and a comprehensive modernization strategy. A phased approach to modernizing the application while maintaining its core functionality and user experience is often the best. At Synchrony, we go by the slogan, “don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress.” With our in-house advanced analytical tools, powered by code refactoring and code generation automation, we help streamline an otherwise very complex undertaking by simplifying its inherent complexity, reducing the risks associated with group-up overhauls, and ensuring that modernizations achieve functional equivalence and are completed at a fraction of cost and time with the absence of advanced automation.
Legacy systems, the reliable workhorses of the past, can become security nightmares in today’s ever-evolving threat landscape. While they may keep critical functions running smoothly, their outdated technology and lack of modern security features create vulnerabilities that cybercriminals are eager to exploit. Let’s explore five key ways legacy systems can significantly increase your cybersecurity risk:
1. Outdated security can’t keep up with modern threats.
Remember the massive Log4j vulnerability that shook the cybersecurity world in late 2021? Legacy systems, often running on unsupported operating systems or software versions, miss out on critical security patches like these. This exposes them to known vulnerabilities attackers can easily leverage to access sensitive data or disrupt operations.
2. Legacy dependencies on aging hardware and software.
Many legacy systems rely on outdated hardware and software for core functionalities. Not actively developed or supported, these components are often riddled with unaddressed security flaws. For a recent example highlighting the security risks posed by outdated software, the Adobe ColdFusion vulnerability CVE-2023-26360 case is a strong illustration. In 2023, threat actors actively exploited this flaw to breach systems, including two U.S. federal government agencies, targeting their outdated versions of ColdFusion. Hackers exploited this vulnerability to gain access, install malware, and perform reconnaissance activities on the compromised systems. However, prompt defensive measures thwarted lateral movement and data exfiltration.
3. Limited visibility into security posture.
Legacy systems often lack the built-in security features present in modern platforms. They may struggle to integrate with modern security tools like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, hindering the ability to have a comprehensive view of a company’s security posture. This lack of visibility makes detecting suspicious activity or potential breaches within the legacy system difficult.
4. Accidental exposure of internal applications.
As business needs evolve, internal applications running on legacy systems can unintentionally be exposed to the internet over time. This creates a direct path for attackers to target them. One example is the 2023 Microsoft Azure data leak, where sensitive internal data was accidentally exposed due to a misconfigured endpoint. This exposure allowed unauthorized users to access information meant to remain internal, underscoring how overlooked configurations in legacy systems and applications can lead to significant data security risks.
5. Slow integration of modern security solutions.
Legacy systems often require significant modifications or complete rewrites to incorporate modern security features like multi-factor authentication or data encryption. Migrating these applications to the cloud is often incremental, as each component needs modification to work securely in the new environment. Until these applications are fully adapted, they’re more vulnerable to attacks and may not benefit from the cloud provider’s built-in security features.
Modernization is the path to a stronger security posture.
Ultimately, a long-term plan for modernizing or replacing legacy systems is crucial for a robust cybersecurity posture. Synchrony’s Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP) supports this process by automating the migration and transformation process, enabling collaborative workflows, and offering clear, traceable insights into software modernization. Continuous Modernization (CM) complements DevOps practices like Continuous Delivery (CD) and Continuous Integration (CI) by allowing organizations to apply software updates consistently and incrementally. This method enables smooth upgrades across in-house applications, APIs, and other software components, regardless of underlying technologies, keeping security and functionality aligned with evolving needs.
Contact us to learn how we could help you modernize your legacy applications.
In the rapidly evolving technology landscape, staying ahead requires not just incremental improvements but transformative leaps. As organizations strive to modernize legacy systems and migrate to more efficient and scalable architectures, the advent of Generative AI (GenAI) is poised to redefine the process.
Over the past several weeks, our discussions have centered on how this cutting-edge technology will reshape our industry and how to harness this power within our business, service offerings, and as part of MLP. Here are six ways we see GenAI unlocking new possibilities for accelerating code migration, enhancing compatibility, and ensuring smoother transitions to modern frameworks.
Enhanced analytics and pattern recognition:
GenAI offers significant benefits for code migration by speeding up the understanding and analysis of legacy systems. It excels at recognizing patterns in code, which are essential for identifying and translating complex structures and dependencies.
Efficiency in code migration:
AI tools can handle time-consuming and repetitive tasks more effectively than humans, especially those requiring detailed pattern recognition. This includes activities like identifying UI patterns and dependencies in code, which traditionally required significant manual effort.
Evolution of migration processes:
The traditional approach of manually creating and maintaining migration libraries and tools is becoming obsolete. AI can automate and streamline these processes, reducing the need for specialized knowledge and extensive manual coding.
Impact on the industry:
GenAI’s rapid improvements and capabilities are poised to change how companies approach code migration. While current migration methods involve custom tools and manual processes, AI can provide more dynamic, on-demand solutions. This shift might lead to significant changes in business models and competitive dynamics in the industry.
Future directions:
Companies that adapt to AI-driven methods will have a competitive advantage. GenAI allows for more sophisticated transformation beyond mere code translation, supporting modern architectures like microservices and micro frontends. The emphasis will shift from simply rewriting code to transforming entire systems to meet contemporary standards and user experiences.
Strategic investment:
As AI capabilities advance, companies are expected to invest more strategically in modernization efforts. AI-driven solutions promise not only cost savings but also the creation of innovative, competitive technology that provides significant business value.
Our discussions highlight that while GenAI will democratize many aspects of code migration, the key to success will be leveraging AI to enhance the complexity and quality of transformations rather than just focusing on code translation.
Contact us if you’re curious about how GenAI can help you modernize your legacy application. We’re happy to discuss your particular needs and help you determine how best to get started.
