Software Migration

OUR PROCESS OF A MIGRATION PROJECT

The indivi­dual steps are as follows:

• workshop: once you have shown interest in a joint migration project with us, we hold an all-day workshop together. Here, you can present your current legacy system and outline your requi­re­ments and ideas concer­ning a software migration. We will present our techno­lo­gies and tools. If you provide us with selec­ted sources of your system (e.g. COBOL program­mes, screen descrip­ti­ons, …), we will demons­trate the migration process based on your sources. In conse­quence, we will decide if the next step of the coope­ra­tion, which invol­ves the prepa­ra­tion of a study, will be made together.
  
• study: having agreed on further coope­ra­tion, we will prepare a study which will essen­ti­ally touch on the follo­wing points: 
  • detailed compi­la­tion of the legacy system to be migra­ted, inclu­ding its appli­ca­tion statistics
  • defining the target system (hardware, archi­tec­ture, appli­ca­tion server, programming and script languages, frame­works etc.)
  • identi­fy­ing the migration paths between legacy and target systems. Among other things, the effort needed to adapt the existing tools to the concrete project requi­re­ments or, as the case may be, to develop new tools, is assessed.
  • outlining the distri­bu­tion of tasks requi­red for the project between the partners concerned
  • deter­mi­ning the effort (costs) and duration of the project as essen­tial results of the study
• pilot project: based on the results of the study, a pilot project (proof of concept) will be initia­ted, which will imple­ment a verti­cal proto­type (screen, server, database) at a selec­ted subset of appro­xi­m­ately 20 % of the legacy system in order to verify the chosen migration technology and the tools used. Depen­ding on the outcome, these tools are readjus­ted if needed.
• pre-enginee­ring: in paral­lel to the pilot project, you will clean up the system to be migra­ted (“pre-enginee­ring before migra­ting”). In this step, the term “pre-enginee­ring” means that re-enginee­ring tasks are carried out ahead of the actual migration. Experi­ence from previous projects has shown that the appli­ca­tion statis­tics to be migra­ted are reduced by appro­xi­m­ately 10–15 %.
• migration project: after these steps of syste­ma­tic prepa­ra­tion, the joint migration project is launched. We offer this for a fixed price, identi­fied in the study. During the migration project, no code freeze is requi­red. Program­mes that have already been migra­ted and are subject to further develo­p­ment as part of general mainten­ance can be migra­ted again at any time. This ensures a contin­ued mainten­ance and an uninter­rupted opera­tion of your existing system. Upon project comple­tion, both the origi­nal programme system and the system resul­ting from the migration have an identi­cal, up-to-date develo­p­ment status.
• refac­to­ring: in the course of numerous migration projects, we have develo­ped a compre­hen­sive tool, which allows the automa­tic refac­to­ring of Java code after a migration. This means that, even years after a comple­ted project, you are able to react flexi­bly to new requirements.

All of our previous projects have been comple­ted successfully – on time and on budget.