Is Legacy Software Slowly Strangling Your Business?

By Philip Newcomb

Philip Newcomb, noted author and CEO of TSRI, explains how Architecture Driven Modernization (ADM) can break the legacy stranglehold, when all else has failed.

As the CEO of a company that routinely modernizes large and complex information systems I’ve listened with great interest to industry analysts calls for IT to modernize their legacy systems, and have been puzzled about why, despite the chorus of calls to action, so many organizations have been slow to undertake the overhaul of their massive and bloated legacy inventories. Why has the pace of modernization been so much slower than analyst predictions? I was recently given an opportunity to investigate the cause for this ‘prediction gap’ when I was invited to give the Keynote to the Opening General Session of the 2010 Software Technology Conference (SSTC). Mindful of the DoD audience, the chairman of the conference asked me to align my speech with the main theme of the conference: Technology: Changing The Game, and to speak, not as a CEO, but in my capacity as the co-author of the recent OMG Series book, Information Systems Transformation: Architecture Driven Modernization Case Studies, Morgan Kauffman, 2010, which I wrote with William M. Ulrich, the chair of the OMG ADM task force.

I titled my talk, appropriately enough, How Architecture-Driven Modernization is Changing the Game in Information Systems Transformation. In preparation, I scheduled an inquiry call with Dale Vecchio, the noted Gartner Group analyst on modernization of legacy systems, to get his assessment of the size of the legacy system problem and perspective on the key drivers motivating legacy modernization. A disturbing study by the Standish Group, the 2008 Chaos Summary had found that only 3% of large projects that cost $10 Million or more succeeded.   I wanted Dale's views on why so many projects had failed and why companies have been so much slower to undertake modernization projects than he and other analysts have predicted.

The first topic I discussed with Dale regarded 'just how big' is the legacy system problem?   Dale acknowledged he did not have a precise estimate, but said indicators pointed to somewhere between half a trillion and a trillion lines of legacy code in the world. I then asked is legacy software really such a big problem? Dale answered emphatically that it was, in fact, a "huge problem," and cited bloated legacy software portfolios as a, "massive drain on national productivity that hinders progress and innovation in every IT sector."  So what makes legacy applications such a big problem? Dale zeroed in on "the declining skills of a generation of obsolete developers," and, "legacy applications written in obsolete languages and obsolete architectures, running on obsolete platforms," that are "many times more costly to maintain and operate than modern applications." Programmer senescence, software, hardware and architecture obsolescence and ROI analysis all confirmed! I asked, if legacy applications are such a big problem, why aren't more companies modernizing their legacy software portfolios?  Then Dale got to the heart of the issue, "Because they are afraid to touch them. The most massive waste in IT occurs on poorly executed replacement efforts," and he added, "There is a 63% failure rate in past replacement projects." So If Greenfield replacement doesn't work, what about Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) application replacement, I inquired? I was surprised by the Dale's candid response, "Package implementation and complete rewrites are among the biggest disasters in IT."   

So, what is different about Architecture Driven Modernization (ADM), and why did the DoD choose to focus the opening keynote at the 2010 SSTC on ADM? The short answer is the DoD itself has used ADM to successfully modernize scores of legacy information systems, achieving a phenomenal 100% success rate. How is this possible when traditional modernization projects have been experiencing failure rates of between 63% and 97%? As shown in the table below, ADM has consistently reduced costs and compressed modernization project schedules to months instead of years. These mission-critical systems varied in size, and were written years ago in a variety of legacy languages but all were quickly and cost-effectively modernized into object-oriented languages running in modern architectures.

The driver behind this phenomenon is recent activities in the Object Management Group's (OMG) Architecture Driven Modernization (ADM) Task Force and the Software Assurance Special Interest Group. ADM is part of an emerging body of OMG standards supported by conformant tools, methods and practices that employ model-based, rule-driven assessment, transformation and refactoring. The projects in the table above were all delivered with  JANUS Studio™, a modernization technology suite from The Software Revolution, Inc. that epitomizes the Object Management Group OMG's ADM standards. JANUS Studio™ permits applications to be quickly, accurately, and uniformly assessed, transformed and refactored in a repeatable, iterative and perfective model-based (rule-drive) process that minimizes human errors and achieves defect free outcomes routinely. TSRI attributes the high success rate for its modernization projects to its use of Application Blueprints and Transformation Blueprints™.  TSRI uses the Application Blueprint for assessment of the "As-Is" state of the code, while the Transformation Blueprint™ provides side-by-side documentation of both the "As-Is" (Source) and "To-Be" (Target) states of the code. During proposal preparations, TSRI provides its prospective customers a cost-free Application Blueprint or Transformation Blueprint™ demonstration pilot using the client's own application code. Using JANUS Studio™ tools and services, legacy systems written in virtually any language can be modernized into new target languages, platforms and environments in a fraction of the cost, time and risk of Greenfield and COTS replacement methods. 

Nearly a decade of successes has proven that state-of-the-art tools and technology based on ADM standards can solve virtually any legacy software modernization problem. The ability of small teams to routinely deliver large projects in compressed schedules makes ADM a truly game changing technology. With its keynote focus on ADM at the SSTC, the DoD signaled that there is simply no excuse for failure-prone manual software rewrites any longer. It firmly established that it is time to change the game and break legacy software's strangle hold on the war fighter's business.

For more information, visit www.tsri.com.