Jumpstarting revenue, development times, and much more with legacy modernization.

Overhauling a legacy system in just two months

Web application development formed the basis of this partnership. We were first brought in to help convert the client’s legacy platform into a web app. After six years of consistent growth, it became clear that the system had some major limitations, even as a web app. We brought in a team of business analysts to create a comprehensive map of the system to identify key pain points and solution requirements throughout the entire system. We then brought in an architecture team to work alongside the client’s engineering team to support quality, integration, and user acceptance testing. By providing end-to-end support and working closely alongside the client’s existing teams, we were able to build and test a production-ready design in less than two months.

Smashing a monolithic system to improve speed and customer experience

The client’s IT asset management app and customer-facing portal utilized monolithic architecture, limiting its flexibility and scalability. This became especially apparent after years of substantial growth in the company. Peak times of use saw the legacy system struggling to keep up. Our client asked us to help simplify their app management and support interoperability and customizable workflows. We did that in three major ways. First, our cloud application development broke the monolithic system into 126 microservices across nine modules using a Microsoft Azure serverless architecture. This provided the client and their customers with a more scalable Software-as-a-Service experience. We followed it up by implementing easy multi-tenant support by utilizing one click to onboard new clients. This reduced onboarding time by 90%, accelerating time-to-revenue because customers only paid once for onboarding. Finally, we integrated Azure’s translation API, multiplying the potential for the client to license its app to third-party users worldwide.

Improving business agility through workflow and rule engine

The client’s operations team had very limited control over application workflows on the legacy system. The system was so rigid even the smallest change to a process or a customer contract meant fully re-customizing the app, which was slow and costly. It was clear they needed us to provide legacy modernization, a process of implementing system updates quickly and with little downtime. Our cloud application development work involved breaking the system down into plug-and-play modules and microservices, and to complement this, we implemented a configurable workflow engine. This granted the operations and engineering teams more control over tasks and activities without having to start from the ground up each time. We also introduced AI-powered Fair Market Value (FMV) predictions based on historical data to automate and inform smarter repair decisions.

Quick, reactive change through automation

Before 2018, the client had to manually deploy applications, which was slow and led to more downtime. Simple updates could take the app offline for up to four hours at a time, and customizing app components for onboarding new clients could easily take up to 30 days. To address these issues, we worked closely with the client’s engineering team on the web application development project. For example, we implemented DevSecOps automation into the development pipeline. This made it easier to reuse code, rollback to previous versions, and control testing features. We also worked with the DevOps team to simplify continuous software delivery with an Azure-native deployment process to quickly onboard new projects to the CI/CD process. Because this new process relied less on manual work, application downtime was reduced by 83% on the DEV/QA/UAT side and 96% on the production side.

Supercharging performance, scalability, and collaboration with our cloud migration strategy

This partnership began with a simple cloud migration strategy to move the client’s existing app and customer portal to the cloud. Once we successfully made the migration and improved app performance and scalability, the client engaged us to continue to provide cloud services. We converted standalone applications for multi-tenancy, multi-currency, multi-lingual use, and configurability. We also helped shift the client’s on-premises database to the same cloud environment to enhance data visibility and cross-organization collaboration. All in all, migrating to an Azure cloud environment has improved almost every aspect of the business. It has allowed our client to offer PaaS tools to its customers and partners. It has made it faster and easier for developers to develop, test, and deploy products. And it has enabled the client to scale resources at near-real time, all while reducing risk across its blue/green deployments.

Making data faster to gather and easier to understand

After years of growth in an increasingly complex landscape, the client was finding it laborious to get an accurate view of asset processing, operational performance, and the customer lifecycle. They needed a scalable way to gather and analyze increasing volumes of data, all while meeting the most recent and stringent data security requirements. We built this data requirement into our modular system. We implemented the NoSQL concepts on the SQL server where appropriate. We moved frequently accessed data to SSD storage for superfast response times. This worked with a reserved throughput model that improved data availability and scalability across unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data. We also built in a dashboard with simplified queries, access to multi-regional database accounts, and the ability to handle large volumes of data at high speed. This has reduced reporting time and improved data availability across the organization.

Reducing IT demand with comprehensive dashboards

The cumbersome nature of the legacy system worked against almost every team, even on the business side. If anyone wanted to use data to gather business intelligence (BI), they had to submit report tickets for the data to IT, which in turn was working with slow, inflexible database architecture. To help our client gain end-to-end asset visibility and extract smarter insights from its operational data, we built interactive dashboards that provided actionable BI solutions. The dashboards produce finance, sales, and performance analysis, giving a 360-degree view of the IT asset lifecycle across all regions. Now the client can easily access timely, accurate insights into operational performance, resource efficiency, and asset status, allowing them to make fast, situational decisions at the right time. As a bonus, these dashboards also mean teams don’t have to go through IT to get data anymore, reducing demand for IT interventions by 80%.