Modernization 2.0: legacy to microservices transformation

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.

Architectural breakthrough: microservices + micro-frontends

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 Outdated interfaces remain one of the most immediate barriers for legacy applications, and micro-frontends directly address this need.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?

How to pay off your technical debt (whitepaper)

Modernize your legacy code for a cloud-native world

Many organizations have already moved to the cloud. Yet the tech debt remains. Applications that were once considered “legacy” now run in modern infrastructure, but they’re still monolithic, tightly coupled, and difficult to change. Cloud hosting alone doesn’t make software cloud-native.

The business logic still matters. These systems still run underwriting, billing, claims, supply chains, and core operations. They cannot simply be replaced. But they can’t stay frozen either.

So what actually reduces tech debt? In this white paper, Jason Bloomberg, President of Intellyx, takes a practical look at legacy modernization — what works, what doesn’t, and where many organizations miscalculate.

Inside the paper:

Why lift and shift often fails to reduce tech debt
The architectural challenges behind monolith-to-cloud transitions
The limits of line-by-line code translation
Balancing automation with human engineering expertise
Why iterative approaches reduce modernization risk
The importance of scoping and lifecycle management in architecture transformation

If your cloud strategy hasn’t delivered the flexibility you expected, this paper offers a more grounded way to think about modernization.

Download your free copy of the tech debt white paper today.

Microservices extraction for monolithic app modernization

Many companies have accelerated their modernization plans in order to meet the new demands of conducting business in a digital-only or primarily digital environment. A recent survey released by Maria DB in partnership with Propeller Insights found that 40% of businesses are accelerating cloud adoption plans, and business leaders expect a long-term benefit from the technology agility and new ways of working.

“Since legacy applications are often the bottleneck for such transformations, legacy modernization is now more critical than ever,” writes Jason Bloomberg, president of Intellyx, in his recent article Digital Transformation and Application Modernization in Time of Crisis.

“Modernizing certain functionality is always more urgent than the rest. True, it will eventually be important to modernize most or all of the legacy application functionality, but today the focus is on what’s most important,” Bloomberg continues.

No longer a pipe dream: automated microservices extraction from the monolith

The historical criticism of a microservices approach to modernizing monolithic applications has been driven by the human ability to understand (or not) the architecture and programming of the monolith itself. If the intellectual capital that developed the application left the company and/or the documentation was weak, then trying to develop properly architected microservices to replace functionality was wrought with issues. When trying to wrap a monolith with microservices, the defects of the legacy architecture translated through to the microservices layer. A microservices approach to replacing the monolith was a mere pipe dream.

Thanks to Synchrony Systems’ innovative engineering and deep domain expertise in the migration automation field, new modernization technology is available that can identify and extract full execution paths of critical business functions and automatically migrate them to the desired target platform as microservices. These microservices have a modern architecture which makes them suitable to be deployed immediately to the cloud and to platforms such as Kubernetes. The microservices extraction technology preserves 100% of the functional equivalence of the legacy functionality, ensuring existing operational processes remain intact postmodernization.

Along with the narrow, vertical fully executable functionality, the microservices extraction technology can also accurately identify candidate “dead” code that can be removed altogether. This reduces technical debt and total cost of ownership by deprecating functionality that no longer matters, and therefore, should not be modernized.

No longer is it necessary to modernize the entire application. Automatic microservices extraction technology gives businesses the ability to rapidly modernize only the code that matters and addresses urgent business needs today.

The benefits of microservices can finally be achieved during application modernization

This microservices extraction technology makes it possible to modernize monolithic legacy applications and realize the long-sought benefits of microservices architecture. These benefits include:

Speed—migrate key business functions to the target platform in months, not years.
Agility—deliver incremental, modern microservices aligned with your DevOps practices.
Flexibility—transform business-critical functionality driven by business priorities.
Scalability—deploy truly scalable microservices and without the bottleneck of the legacy monolith.
Savings—reduce technical debt, the total cost of ownership and the upfront spend on the modernization.

Companies will also benefit from the new services model for modernizations, Modernization-as-a-Service (MaaS), that microservices extraction capabilities enable. Modernizations now can be planned, budgeted, and executed incrementally over time instead of an all-or-nothing approach.

Synchrony Systems announces microservices extraction capabilities for rapid migration of in-house legacy application functionality

Greenwich, CT (April 6, 2020) – Synchrony Systems, Inc., a leader in legacy application modernizations, today announced new microservices extraction capabilities of their Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP). The underlying source code migration and upgrade technology identifies and extracts full execution paths of critical business functions and automatically migrates them to the desired target platform as microservices suitable to be deployed to the cloud and to platforms such as Kubernetes.

The typical modernization process of monolithic in-house applications is to upgrade the entire application before the smallest bit of functionality can be run on the target platform. Traditionally, application modernizations have been an all-or-nothing proposition.

“Thanks to the ingenuity of our lab, we’ve added a powerful capability to our source code transformation engine that dramatically reduces the cost and time that it takes to produce a working system in order to deliver some of the application’s business-critical functionality,” said Slavik Zorin, CEO of Synchrony Systems. “No longer is it necessary to modernize the entire application. Instead, it is now possible to accurately extract narrow, vertical execution paths of critical business-functions and migrate them to a modern, cloud-ready, target platform. This gives businesses the ability to rapidly modernize only the code that matters and address urgent business needs today.”

Microservices extraction also has the ability to more accurately identify candidate “dead” code that can be removed altogether. This visibility helps IT and software engineering professionals reduce technical debt and total cost of ownership by deprecating functionality that no longer matters, and therefore, should not be modernized.

“CIOs who have managed migration projects know that short-term quick fixes create long-term technical debt,” stated Jason Bloomberg, president of Intellyx, an analyst and advisory firm helping business executives and IT leaders untangle the technologies and practices behind digital transformation. “The microservices extraction capabilities in Synchrony Systems’ Modernization Lifecycle Platform not only shortens the time to value, but they can actually decrease technical debt as well as the long-term total cost of ownership of modernized systems.”

“This is a game-changer for institutional companies like banking or insurance where in-house applications are preventing them from actualizing their digital transformation or engagement initiatives,” added Zorin. “Companies are now able to migrate key business functions to a target platform in only a few months, not years while preserving 100% functional equivalence and delivering in the process a modern target architecture.”

About Synchrony Systems, Inc.

We help enterprises transform legacy in-house applications to modern technologies while preserving business-critical functionality. Synchrony’s Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP) is a scalable, cloud-based platform for managing and executing end-to-end migrations and modernizations of legacy IT applications to modern software architectures and platforms. It enables automated code conversion, transformation, remediation, and upgrades of millions of lines of code in minutes, ensuring consistent, reliable, and repeatable results. MLP was named a 2019 SIIA CODiE Award Finalist for Best Emerging Technology and 2018 SIIA CODiE Awards finalist for Best DevOps Tool.

CEO interview part 1: modernization approaches

Our founder and CEO, Slavik Zorin, has been a pioneer in legacy application modernization for 20 years. His approach to modernization has been quite different from traditional modernization. Back in 2011 – yes, over a decade ago – he was interviewed about his vision for the future, modern-day modernization approaches now made real by his company, Synchrony Systems.

Here are a few excerpts from that interview that still ring true.

The differences and benefits of the Synchrony Systems approach to modernization

“The mainstream of legacy application modernization is a people-driven business. In addition to transforming the programming language, it promises to transform the old application architecture to the new service-oriented architecture, improve code quality and reuse, and in the process, redesign the old User Interface to modern web-based UI.

This is a great promise, but it comes packaged in a roadmap that is upside-down. It is upside-down because any structural or architectural redesign actually breaks the functionality of the application. Changing the programming language and the underlying application architecture and design at the same time turns the modernization into a rewrite and makes it a people-driven business that is labor-intensive, complex, expensive, and therefore fraught with the risk of ever completing.

We offer an alternative—an automated, software-driven solution called migration that eliminates the current manual, labor-intensive and error-prone approach to modernization. Migration focuses on software asset preservation while modernization focuses on its improvement. Modernization should be done on the modern platform using modern tools, so the main goal should be to get the legacy application to the target platform as soon as possible. Migration transforms the legacy application to the target platform “as-is” – without changing the original software architecture or design. As the first step of modernization, migration makes the transition to the target platform manageable and predictable. Unlike a rewrite, it guarantees to complete on time and on budget and ensures that the application functions and feels exactly the same as the original.

Our motto for application modernization is: migrate the application to the target platform and get it working first; do everything else second.”

The current landscape of legacy application modernization companies

“For the most part, legacy application modernization is a services industry. The industry is quite fragmented with companies focusing on their own niche legacy market. Migration software, if there is one at all, is proprietary, and only gets used by the companies who developed it. It is hard to scale such a business model since it can only sustain a handful of modernization projects at a time. No one company, in particular, is a recognized leader in application modernization.

The System Integrators who win the big enterprise modernization and portfolio optimization deals generally subcontract specific application modernization projects to local vendors with unique skills in certain areas of their specialty. Unless applications are retired or replaced with off-the-shelf products, modernization projects are sold as professional services and not as software.

Before anyone can fully capitalize on the large software application legacy, the current fractured market of niche companies needs to be consolidated and industrialized. A new scaleable solution has to emerge in order to bring together all stakeholders into a single integrated and collaborative modernization platform that is a win-win for everyone. We call that platform MaaS – Modernization-as-a-Service, and we believe it will change the industry as we know it.”

Why is there no $1 billion market leader today?

Readers Note: There is still no $1 billion market leader

“The market for legacy modernization is clearly huge – and global. By some estimates, in excess of $100 billion. But only a fraction of the opportunity is currently being realized by any one company.

I think it is obvious that application modernization is a hard problem with a large barrier to entry for anyone. It requires deep knowledge of source and target software platforms. In general, the skills required to perform application modernization are quite uncommon and not easily acquired. To top it off, very few companies have captured their experience into software that addresses this challenge in a systematic and repeatable fashion without relying exclusively on services. Services are required to deliver a modernization solution, but only a software platform can scale it. This is the MaaS platform I just spoke about, and it is the major ingredient for a $1B market leader to emerge.

But for such a platform to gain global acceptance, it will need backing from a major industry force. Modernization projects are not just simple upgrades. Modernization promises customers a smooth transition to a new platform where their mission-critical applications will continue running their businesses uninterrupted. This is a tall order! Companies modernize only the applications that they maintain, and they maintain only the ones that matter – the ones which bring value and run their businesses. Corporate IT needs to bridge the gap between the Software Development Lifecycle, something that is well known, and the Software Modernization Lifecycle, something that is not. It will take a company like IBM to help organizations bridge that gap. With enough clout backing this approach and the MaaS platform, I believe we have the necessary ingredients for the emergence of a $1B enterprise.”

Read more about Modernization as a Service (MaaS), the new technology-driven approach to modernizations.