Lifetime Extensions & Future Proofing
In many cases, Lifetime Extension & Future Proofing approach is the only feasible option, especially for legacy systems with significantly more than 5 million lines of code. While the approach usually requires a significant investment, with projects often running 3-5 years (in parallel to the normal maintenance), the results are compelling, including streamlined operations and maintenance, as well as better quality and faster response to new business requirements. In order to achieve these results, Lifetime Extension & Future Proofing usually has to address critical issues in the areas of development and maintenance process, application environment, and application structure. To achieve a sustained improvement in development and maintenance performance, it is necessary to pursue a systematic, proactive strategy. In order to achieve this, it is first necessary to evaluate maintenance performance and to determine areas for potential improvement. This is what the Maintenance Review Process from Interactive Objects has been designed to do. The process pays particularly close attention to:
Based on the findings of the initial analysis, iO can help implementing concrete action plans to improve the development and maintenance process. In many cases, significant optimization potential lies within the legacy application environment. In particular, one should consider the following:
Application Structure The actual structure of the legacy application has a significant impact on the performance of the development and maintenance process. Today, many companies have introduced SOA-style interfaces to their core legacy systems (e.g. using CORBA or Web Services), allowing for innovative new front-ends. However, few companies so far have managed to address the uncontrollable "spaghetti" behind these interfaces. This means they are trapped into "big bang" rollouts of new releases, which usually leading to high number of emergency requests after each rollout. Making changes in small steps would create fewer problems, but this is usually not possible because of the tight coupling between the thousands of applications. In addition, there is usually no way to develop and test components independently. In order to address these issues, one has to address the structural problems of the legacy applications. This typically involves:
Interactive Objects has developed a strong methodology and accompanying tools to support the componentization of complex legacy systems. The process includes the creation of an "as is" and a "to be" SOA component map as the basis for the planning of the disentanglement process. Change management and code generation tools are then used to support the actual disentanglement process.  Benefits of Interactive Objects approach include:
|