A new option for action
Understanding software, preserving assets
Successful IT and software systems have been in place for decades in almost all industries and control business processes and devices. They have been developed over many years, are indispensable for business, manage customer and business data and contain precise detailed knowledge about the business. Existing software therefore has enormous value and is part of the company’s assets. However, technological change and changing requirements are causing software solutions to age. Quality deficiencies increase over time and result in decreasing performance, increasing time-to-system and rising costs. However, due to the enormous scope of the systems, replacing them with new procurement or new implementation is often expensive, risky or even unrealistic. Software renovation is a new option. It means understanding existing software, using existing assets and restoring future viability with innovative methods and tools.
Key facts and activities
- System sizes: 0.5 million – 50 million LoC
- Software value: € 5 million – € 1 billion
- Software age: 3 – 52 years, average: 25 years
- %-75% Duplication, 30% dead code, workarounds, undocumented
- Technologies: Assembler, COBOL, NATURAL, PL/I, MATLAB, VaGen, PowerBuilder, C++, Java, IMS/CICS, AngularJS, Struts, z/OS, iSeries, Windows, UNIX/Linux and 100e more
- Full-scale redesign
- Reverse engineering, knowledge extraction
- Algorithmic performance optimization
- Redocumentation
- Platform migration, technology/framework change
- Code-CleanUp, Stabilization
- Architecture change, refactoring
How is software renovated?
Software Renovation (SR) is not a mechanical activity or tool, but an innovative discipline that includes and uses specialized knowledge, methods, special activities and, in some areas, tools. SR begins with a structured health check of the existing solution with regard to the degree of coverage of business requirements, technical quality (implementation, documentation, data storage), costs (development, operation, infrastructure) and development and operating processes. The inventory is compared with alternative solution designs, industry benchmarks and the company’s strategic objectives. A transformation roadmap is derived from the actual and target figures, taking into account the economic framework conditions, which is then implemented in projects in the short term or over several years – depending on requirements.
We restore for the future
Expertise in software renovation is the unique selling point of itestra GmbH. Based on its own scientific work, itestra GmbH has been evaluating, optimizing and renovating extensive software systems for well-known companies in various industries for more than 15 years. Our SR project portfolio includes the complete redesign of software landscapes, e.g. from RPG, NATURAL, COBOL, C/++ into modern, object- and service-oriented as well as web-based systems in Java, C# and others, as well as platform migration, redocumentation of legacy software, restoration of maintainability through code cleanup or performance optimization of central algorithms to reduce runtimes and CPU costs by more than 50%. We take responsibility, guarantee contractual success and use innovative methods such as manual reverse engineering, automated comparison testing, migration tracking (to track redesign progress), write-through architecture to avoid parallel development and special analysis tools. We renovate your software asset.
