Too Good To Be True?

Ana AndradeApplication ModernizationLeave a Comment

Tom Robinson Too Good To Be True

I have a confession to make. Well, two actually. Firstly, I am new to the legacy modernization space. This is only the end of my second year pondering and wondering why so many make such a meal of something that, frankly, isn’t that difficult.

There, I said it. This really isn’t that difficult. Certainly not as difficult as most people make it out to be.

The second confession is that I am old enough (just) to remember Tom Robinson’s song ‘Too Good To Be True’ hitting the UK charts in 1978. If you missed Tom, he’s one of the greatest British songwriters of all time…

The connection between the two? Well that came from a recent partner meeting. At Morphis we’re keen to extend our market reach through partners [delivering modernization services based on our technology platform] and we were demonstrating the Morphis platform to a new, prospective parter. And I should add, not a partner new to the space (like me) but a company with decades of experience modernizing legacy systems.

During a follow-up call a week or so afterwards my contact at the partner said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Neil, but it all looked too good to be true.”

We’d only showed the automatic transformation of Oracle Forms to an MVC Java environment but this was enough to have 20 to 30-year legacy modernization veterans questioning what they were seeing. Probably just as well we didn’t get into our BI for IT front-end or low code application development framework on the back-end…

Why am I telling you this? Because it does work and it really isn’t that difficult. Morphis was founded in 2013 and has brought significant Computer Science expertise to solving the legacy modernization challenge. Super-bright, young people solving an age old problem.

Plus there is a cynicism or tiredness among those who have been in the space for a long time. I exclude the partner we’re talking to from that comment, but I met an analyst who looks at the legacy modernization space just a short time after joining Morphis and was struck by his, well, cynicism. If that analyst is advising his clients then he’s unlikely to be presenting modernization solutions as exciting or innovative, but that’s just what Morphis is.

So what is this platform that has successfully modernized tens of millions of LOC with highlighted case studies such as Ellucian, Miami-Dade County, MV Sistemas and TOTVS?

It’s a 3 stage process: Analyze, Transform and Develop.

  • Analyze: using Kuscos, our BI for IT solution. What does the legacy application look like. How large, how complex? Redundant/duplicate code? Which modules are most interconnected and, therefore, may represent the most complex to modernize?
  • Transform: now known as “too good to be true” transformation. A single platform that parses in any legacy language and outputs Java or .NET.

  • Develop: a low code application development framework that enables our clients to maintain and enhance their modernized MVC application. This solution is realized as a plugin to Visual Studio (.NET) or Eclipse (Java) and comprises Frames (a technology-agnostic UI definition language, development toolset and runtime engine) and Foundations (the application development framework for database-driven apps).

To find out how Morphis can support your legacy modernization initiatives in a drama-free, low cost, rapid time to market environment then please contact us.

If You Like This Post, Please Share It!

Click an icon below to share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *