UniqueSoft
Next-Generation Legacy Modernization

“Doing more with less” and “adapt or die” are twin mantras that every CIO grapples with, and this is no different in telecom. As key business concerns have shifted away from physical plants and networks to Software as a Service (SaaS) innovation and Big Data, CIOs have to adapt to rapidly changing business conditions with increasingly less resources. Under pressure to solve IT and business problems alike, companies rely on software, old and new, to be agile. For many leaders, especially those inheriting legacy systems, this is a challenge. Legacy systems prove to be inflexible and cumbersome for today’s business expectations and needs. In the race to maximize value and business performance, firms struggle to modernize business-critical software assets to new platforms. With both business and customer stakes high, many efforts to modernize IT applications or technology environments put a CIO at significant risk of not just failing at the project, but also failing in their role. A new way of automating modernization projects will change this.

The team at UniqueSoft has developed a legacy modernization platform called D*Code that automates 90 percent of modernization tasks. Automation in legacy modernization is nothing new, but most second generation modernization tools only achieve automation levels of less than 30 percent, leaving CIOs to rely on error-prone, risk-increasing manual methods for 70 percent of their tasks. With the 90 percent automation afforded by third generation D*Code tool, CIOs are not only able to modernize quickly but to modernize accurately with a thousand-fold reduction in code defects compared to manual methods.

How can 90 percent automation be achieved with such accuracy? After several clients asked them for modernization assistance, UniqueSoft started exploring ways to help their customers solve expensive modernization problems. In their research, UniqueSoft discovered new applications for artificial intelligence (AI) and found that automation with AI extends well to rules-based engines. AI has a particular capability to identify the architecture and features of legacy applications. UniqueSoft then applied a Six Sigma development process to embed continuous quality improvement, and D*Code was born.

The impact: D*Code handles and automates massive amounts of code, applying complex transformation rules while generating high-quality code.

A lot of companies are performing automation but eventually, what matters is quality output with low defects, and UniqueSoft’s D*Code has proven to produce that

One of the largest telecom service companies in the world has already taken advantage of D*Code’s benefits. Working with UniqueSoft and a systems integrator to modernize a billing system, this telecom company tackled modernization of their 4 million lines of code billing system at the heart of their business. Two previous attempts using second generation modernization tools met with failure. D*Code was customized to address non-standard COBOL, adapted to software coding standards for the translated Java, and achieved demanding performance enhancements while moving from the mainframe to a Linux platform.

The quality and flexibility that D*Code offers has allowed many of UniqueSoft’s CIO clients in telecom, financial services, public sector, and other verticals to move confidently forward with modernization projects. D*Code will enable them to document buried code functionality, allow rapid and accurate extraction of business rules, translate to new languages, and also enable the migration of legacy systems to a microservices architecture or the cloud.

Digitalization is a critical force behind growth, innovation, and disruption across multiple industries. CIOs need to have the tools to capitalize on advances in technology. AI-based tools like UniqueSoft’s D*Code create a substantial advantage.