Project: Automated Application Modernisation

Overview

Enterprises face significant challenges migrating thousands of legacy applications into modern, cloud‑native architectures. This project explored how automation, open‑source tooling, and reusable migration recipes can dramatically reduce cost and complexity.

Goals

• Analyse a large legacy application estate (~2,000+ apps)
• Automate migration from outdated middleware to modern frameworks
• Reduce developer toil and operational burden
• Provide actionable insights into the state of the application portfolio

Approach

• Portfolio Analysis: Scanned thousands of applications to identify common patterns and archetypes.
• Automated Migration: Applied open‑source tooling and custom migration recipes to translate legacy code.
• Inner Loop (Migration): Streamlined developer workflows to reduce manual code changes.
• Outer Loop (Maintenance): Extended automation into patching and ongoing code maintenance.

Results

• 54% of legacy codebase migrated through automation
• 75% of source code generated automatically
• 80% reduction in migration time compared with manual effort
• Estimated multi‑million pound savings in developer efficiency (based on initial sample applications)
• Clear portfolio insights enabled better modernisation strategy

Key Learnings

• Tooling setup is often harder and slower than expected
• Customers want ready‑to‑use recipes, not just enablement
• Reusable migration recipes compound value over time
• Estate‑wide analysis provides as much benefit as code automation itself

Impact

This work demonstrated that large‑scale application modernisation can move from a costly, manual burden to a repeatable, automated process — accelerating cloud adoption, reducing costs, and unlocking long‑term efficiency.