Teaming up with internationally recognized system integrators and other technology partners, The Software Revolution, Inc. (TSRI) has modernized hundreds of major legacy systems, including applications requiring the highest standards of perfection. These have included air traffic control systems, critical aircraft avionic systems, large-scale Department of Defense applications, financial applications, and numerous other mission-critical software environments in a variety of industries. These projects comprise a wide variety of legacy source languages, database structures, and modern target languages and platforms.
For the last 20 years, TSRI provided uniquely reliable language- and industry-neutral automated legacy software system modernization services for government and commercial customers, worldwide.
Aerospace and Defense Services for All
® TSRI’s toolset, JANUS Studio, isn’t only applicable to the Aerospace/Defense industry; its adaptability makes it a powerful tool in any industry where reliable, functionally equivalent modernization is ® called for. JANUS Studio offers model-driven, completely language-agnostic, fully automated transformation. As a result, TSRI can process over 30 different legacy coding languages and produce modern code in the chosen target environment along with the applications underlying databases/user interfaces. Its toolset also has the ability to document and refactor these legacy systems for increased understanding and security, along with many other tasks. The underlying technologies are so far advanced currently, as to allow for sophisticated machine-driven rearchitecting of code, where internet naïve in-going legacy systems are seamlessly and rapidly rearchitected and emitted as micro services and cloud architectures.
A Leader in Modernization of Legacy Applications into Modern Languages/Environments Philip Newcomb, Founder and CEO of The Software Revolution Inc., received his bachelors from Indiana State University and completed his graduate work at the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, and Ball State University sequentially. Philip then spent 13 years researching the engineering, formal methods, and artificial intelligence of software at the Boeing Artificial Intelligence center. Since TSRI’s inception in 1995, Philip has grown into an international leader regarding the modernization of legacy applications, architecture-driven reengineering, modernization, research, and the development and commercialization of automated tools and methods supporting advancement of the field.
In 2011, Philip received the Stevens Award and currently serves as the international chair of the Architecture-Driven Modernization Task Force at the Object Management Group (OMG).
Philip asserts, “TSRI has been fortunate in that we’ve been able to contribute a number of big, useful solutions in the Aerospace/Defense field.” A good example of the large-scale type work we’re frequently asked to perform is the European-traffic management system. Originally written in Ada 83, TSRI’s European partner achieved acceptance for the deployment of a new version of the flight data processing (FDP) system by transforming it into real-time Java. This system was widely accepted and now operates at over 320 air traffic control centers worldwide. The TopSky system now covers 40% of the world’s airspace and is considered a stable, highly functional platform.”
Innovation at Core
Over the past decade, there has been a shift in the industry from a few core businesses handling various projects to many vendors. This is especially prominent in the technology segment of the industry due to their ability to deliver solutions in a much shorter time frame, and often, at a fraction of the cost.
TSRI continually supports the development of new ideas, practices, products, and services, which it can provide its customers along with dissolution of hierarchical roadblocks. This allows anyone in the organization to have a voice, and put their input, enabling the development of innovative ideas. In this way, TSRI is able to deliver the solutions to its clients’ in a much shorter time freame and often at a fraction of the cost.
Laser-Focused on Innovation
“Today’s innovation is tomorrow’s legacy.” In order to drive continued innovation in this field, every company’s best practice should be to continually focus on the future. TSRI seeks innovation by practicing a “fail fast”, pivot as necessary approach to problem resolution, which ensures rapid and successful adaptation to even the most difficult modernization tasks. Ideas are king, and as a result, resource limitations and novel challenges are overcome time and time again by aggressively pursuing open, creative, team-driven solutions.
The result is that versatile automated solution technologies are developing a rapidly expanding proven track record, allowing for a faster transition to modern architectures.
The future of modernization revolves around the continued automation and hardening of solutions relating to the maintenance, retention, transformation, and improvement of irreplaceable legacy systems. TSRI’s goal is to support and develop mature capabilities for the newest languages while continuing to handle at least eighty percent of all actively maintained software languages. It keeps expanding its capabilities for automated refactoring, including remediating security vulnerabilities and re-architecting applications into cloud architectures. Overall its main goal is to maintain its spot as an innovator and leader in the legacy modernization sector.
Modern World, Modern Ways
“The biggest change we are experiencing in the modernization space is mass migration to the cloud and the software and technology that comes from this highly demanded service. We have found that more of our clients are looking to modernize to cloud architectures such as AWS or Azure,” adds Philip.
TSRI engages cloud-enabling modernization projects, which include developing, refactoring, and transformation solutions to target micro-services architectures as outputs. Examples include customers seeking to transform COBOL to target a Java micro services architecture using Dockers/Kubernetes containers, private clouds, etc. TSRI’s main strategy in the face of the rapidly evolving technical demands of the industry remains, in some ways, what it always has… focus on innovation without compromise, while offering reliability and flexibility to its customer in the target architectures of their choosing.
