CIOInsider India Magazine
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Thomas Weigert
Chief Technology Office
Today, one of the major challenges for
IT service companies is to keep up with the constantly evolving technology landscape and provide solutions that are aligned with the clients' changing needs. With over 17 years of experience, Natsoft Corporation is a leading IT service company catering to a diverse range of clients from different industries by providing innovative solutions and services in five key verticals Solutions, Services, Products, BPM, and VAR. The firm’s deep domain expertise and its team of over 2000 associates have enabled the company to help its clients digitally transform their operations, develop and deploy IT products, and provide software services, application development, business process outsourcing, and IT infrastructure setup and support. Natsoft operates across the globe. holding a strong presence in the US, India, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Singapore.
We recently engaged with the Chief Technology Officer of Natsoft Corporation, Thomas Weigert, where he shares in detail about Updraft, a firm recently acquired by Natsoft Corporation. Thomas is also the CEO of Updraft. Let’s hear from him.
Can you provide a brief insight on
Updraft's (a Natsoft Company) role and
position in the IT services industry?
Updraft is a specialized IT services firm that helps clients transition their outdated legacy systems to modern platforms and architectures. To date, Updraft has successfully migrated more than 100 million lines of legacy code to modern systems. Unlike its competitors, Updraft's legacy modernization process is fully automated, eliminating the need for manual intervention. The company
believes that automating the legacy modernization process is critical to the successful migration of large legacy applications. Automation is not only less expensive and more efficient than manual processes, but it also reduces the risk of modernization. Inevitably,large and complex modernization projects encounter changes along the way, either due to new insights about the legacy system or new architectural requirements for the future state system. When such changes occur, Updraft updates its tooling and reruns the process, rather than having to start over.
Customers choose Updraft legacy modernization because of its completely automated process and successful track record
Can you describe the impact of your flagship products and explain the customer experience?
Updraft's legacy modernization process is designed like an assembly line, customized to fit each client's unique needs and goals. This "modernization factory" transforms legacy systems into modern platforms while considering factors such as the client's constraints and desired future state. For example, when modernizing a telecom company's billing system, Updraft recognized that simply translating the legacy code to Java would result in a difficult-to-maintain structure due to the preprocessor's pointers and unwieldy architecture. Instead, the company developed custom transformations to translate the code layers separately and introduced a Java-based component architecture that maintained the original architectural separation, as the client desired. Similarly, when migrating a client/s large batch application, Updraft's tools automatically detected and replaced slow linear searches with much more efficient algorithms. Custom transformations also adjust the generated Java code to match the client's coding standards, improve an application's scalability by decomposing monolithic systems into microservices, and eliminate dead or unused code
during the migration process. During an engagement, clients only need to provide the legacy code and describe their desired future state. Updraft sets up its legacy modernization factory to match the client's needs, runs the legacy code through the factory, and delivers immediately deployable modernized code to the client's environment.
What makes customers choose your services in the market?
Customers choose Updraft legacy modernization because of its automated process and successful track record. Since every modernization project presents unique challenges and changes, a provider's ability to solve these challenges and adapt to changes without delay is crucial for success. With its customized and automated modernization factory, Updraft has demonstrated a 100 percent success rate and has completed several large-scale modernizations where other vendors have failed before.
What is the future roadmap envisioned for Updraft (a Natsoft Company)? Where is it headed for the next five years?
Updraft is constantly enhancing its automated tools to meet client’s demands and the latest market requirements. The company's tools are built using a generic program transformation engine that can easily integrate new programming languages and target environments into the legacy modernization factory. For instance, Updraft has recently developed tooling to replace outdated ColdFusion-based front-ends with modern user interface technologies such as Angular and Java. Also, the company has implemented tools that move applications from legacy databases to PostgreSQL or non-SQL databases for cloud-based applications. In the coming years, Updraft believes that mainframe systems will continue to pose the most significant challenge to clients' growth initiatives, but eventually, Java-based systems, as well as custom systems based on technologies like Salesforce, PEGA, or SAP, will require modernization. The company's legacy modernization tools will continue to evolve, allowing clients to keep up with the latest technologies and make legacy history.
