Displaying items by tag: tsri

L-3 Communications Corporation awarded a sole-source contract to TSRI for modernization of the the U.S. Army’s Variable Message Format Test Tool (VTT).

How much automation actually makes a difference?
10% of 10 million lines of code is still 1 million lines.

A major modernization project involving millions or tens of millions of lines of code can take years and cost millions of dollars. Using artificial intelligence and modern computing method and automation, much of that time and expense can be eliminated. The question is, by how much? If your project starts out at 10 million lines of code and your automation technique cuts that down by 90%, you’re still left with a 1-million-line project that can take months to manually assess, document, transform, and refactor.

To appreciably accelerate large modernization projects, automation must eliminate as near as possible to 100% of the effort. That means in the range of 99.9X%. Without that, your organization can be left with significant and costly manual loads that can take years, strain budgets, result in unacceptable error rates, and still produce poorly written modern code. Even advanced automation cannot take code straight from any source language to a modern cloud-ready language. First, the code must be translated through a universally accepted language modeling system and standard to maximize the extensibility and efficiency of application analysis, transformation, and refactoring—an Intermediate Object Model (IOM). This is one of the keys to accelerating modernization that The Software Revolution Inc. (TSRI) has implemented for their clients.

The languages used for specifying grammars and transformations must fit the specific problems at hand and be as expressive and efficient as possible. TSRI has developed and defined three domain-specific high-level specification languages JPGEN™, JTGEN™ and JRGEN™:

• JPGEN™ defines grammar system and language models

• JTGEN™ delineates transformations between these models

• JRGEN™, a 5th generation artificial intelligence language supports first order logic and predicate calculus as well as 3GL and 4GL language constructs

Together, these three proprietary tools comprise TSRI’s JANUS Studio^®.

IOM: A Literally Exponential Improvement in Transformation
The three components of JANUS Studio^® transform and compile software code originally developed in language such as Ada, Visual Basic, Vax Basic, C, C++, COBOL, C#, Java, Jovial, FORTRAN, and more than 30 other languages into efficient, platform-neutral C++.  The core function of the IOM creates a language-neutral model into which all legacy source languages are transformed, and from which all modernized target languages can be generated. The IOM is effectively a universal translator. It simplifies the “O(n-squared)” language transformation problem to a much simpler “O(n+1)” language transformation problem. The IOM provides a set of generic language constructs that serve as a reusable language-neutral formalism for assessment, documentation, transformation, refactoring, and web-enablement.

This solution allows simple 64-bit multi-processor LINUX platforms to analyze massive software models using parallel processing.

Using IOM, and the expertise of TSRI’s exceptionally skilled developers, JANUS Studio^® is simply the most powerful, least expensive, and lowest risk technology available to automatically modernize (assess, document, transform, refactor, and web-enable) legacy systems. Using the AI-enhanced capabilities of JANUS Studio^®, 99.9X% of software transformation can be automated, cutting transformation project times from years to months—or weeks.
 

"Simply the most powerful, least expensive and lowest risk technology available to automatically assess, document, transform, refactor, and web-enable legacy systems.”

A Model for Automated Modernization

As Scale Increases, So Does Efficiency
JANUS Studio^®  allows TSRI developers to cut modernization projects so drastically using Artificial Intelligence-based modeling that drives that 99.9X% automation rate. Not only that, but because every application and every language is modernized and transformed at the meta-model stage, every prior project (regardless of the language or industry) further develops the toolset and TSRI libraries, resulting in greater value for each future project. The more scale, the more uses, the more efficient the process.
 

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It’s no surprise that TSRI adheres to the Object Management Group (OMG) principles of model-based and architecture-driven software modernization. We’re not just a member, TSRI is the principal author of the Abstract Syntax Tree Meta-Modelling Standard used by the OMG. We’re deeply involved in the innovations and future of OMG and look forward to the next Member Meeting March 21-25 in Reston, Virginia. If you plan to be there, we’d love to talk about how to significantly accelerate your modernization projects, while lowering cost and error rates.
 

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TSRI is Here for You 
As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years. 

See Case Studies 
Learn About Our Technology 
Get Started on Your Modernization Journey Today! 

As we enter a new year, it’s only natural to look back on what we accomplished in the past 365 days. Many of those accomplishments centered around explaining what TSRI does in a way that nearly everyone can understand. Software modernization and refactoring solutions are, by their very nature, complex concepts. Teams of specialized engineers are required to successfully complete each project, and even the simplest automated transformations can take months to get all the right pieces put into place.

In this blog, we highlight some of the most informative pieces published in 2021. These materials were designed to help make the automated modernization process easier to understand and navigate from start to finish. We hope you’ll find them useful as you consider your organization’s IT plans and modernization initiatives for the coming year.

GETTING READY TO MODERNIZE!

Modernizing to the Cloud 
Scott Pickett, TSRI’s Vice President of Product Operations and Service Delivery, conducted a live presentation that discussed how automated modernization can help organizations move their applications to the cloud. The presentation resulted in a complete series of videos, all of which are accessible from the post linked above.

Check out this article featuring a downloadable Checklist: Preparing for Cloud Modernization to help you assess your organization’s current assets, including your existing codebase, databases, and other tools that may be installed on your mainframes and other legacy technologies.

MODERNIZE WITH LESS DISRUPTION

One of the major risks of any modernization is the amount of time a system will be taken offline during cutover to the new environment. Any downtime becomes a disruption to the business, whether that means lost revenue or maintaining security of mission-critical systems. This post, 4 Tips for Modernizing with Minimal Business Disruption discusses ways that organizations can mitigate disruption, and also explains how proofs of concepts, step-wise automated migrations, and proper planning play into maintaining continuous uptime.
 

Common Misconceptions About Modernization (And What to Do About Them)
Application modernization is a game changer in any organization. Oftentimes, perceived obstacles, such as prolonged system downtime, get in the way of bringing mission-critical applications to modern programming environments. This article helps to dispel many of those notions.

Automated Refactoring: The Critical Component to Achieving a Successful Modernization
When any application gets modernized, the codebase shifts from a legacy language such as COBOL or PL/1 to a modern language such as C# or Java. However, just because the language is up to date doesn’t mean the system will operate more efficiently. That’s why refactoring is so important: this automated, iterative process eliminates dead code and redundancies while streamlining the entire application. It’s truly the key to more secure, robust applications.

Microservices Offer Robustness and Security in Modern Systems
Many, if not most of the clients who modernize their mainframes with TSRI started out with monolithic systems. All functions in the workflow relied upon one another, and if one area went down, the entire system went down. Modern software architecture operates using multiple tiers that interoperate with one another, but aren’t dependent on each other. That means if one area goes down, the entire system doesn’t go down with it. A component of this structure, known as microservices, makes for easier software maintenance and also protects organizations while allowing for faster go-to-market strategies for new applications.

Cloud Migration and Containerization: 3 Steps to Reduce Risk and Ensure Success
An important benefit to automated modernization is how the business logic of the transformed application never changes. Sometimes, particularly when modernizing to the cloud, the legacy application may still require some usage. Rather than keep the mainframe in operation or employing some other inefficient, insecure method, transforming to a containerized modern codebase can keep those application instances separate from the rest of its processes. This method increases security and efficiency while allowing for further system development in modern languages.

As you contemplate modernizing your mainframe or embedded-system applications in the new year, we hope these articles will provide you with the knowledge you need to move forward.

No change in business logic.
Reduction in overhead costs. 
Continuous development during and after migration.

These are a few modernization concepts that Scott Pickett, TSRI’s Vice President of Product Operations and Service Delivery, discussed on his recent appearance on Amazon Web Services’ APN TV channel. 

“TSRI allows for an ability to do automated transformation of not only your language, but your application to the cloud environment, allowing you to bring in skilled, modern technology to your legacy implementations, being able to drive down the cost point associated with ongoing operational costs, and being able to deliver new applications, new functionality, new screens, and new capabilities in that modern language,” he said in his talk. 

So what does that mean, exactly? 

In TSRI’s modernization of a major European bank to the cloud, that meant they modernized approximately 80,000 lines of code at 99.7% automation. In other words, only 384 of those lines of code were hand-written. That's big for a project of this size—but it's huge when you're talking about applications with hundreds of thousands or even millions of lines of code!

For any organization, whether in commercial enterprise organizations like the banking client mentioned above, or in government agencies, modernization reduces risk. 

“You're able to bring a new skill set, new experts that know Java and know CI and CD tools and apply them to your legacy application that's been modernized,” Scott said. “It literally also allows for the ability to drop tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, off your monthly costs.” 

As Scott also noted in his presentation, “we can not only transform code quickly…because there are very, very few manual changes, but it also means that you can migrate to the cloud and then be able to not have any business logic change associated with that migration.” 

Maintaining business logic is a big deal when it comes to systems that measure their age in decades rather than years and the original programmers have long since moved on. 

One other interesting point Scott brought up is how TSRI’s tools have enabled customers to maintain agility and competitive advantage by providing its clients with the modern, cloud-based applications they need—all while reaching back to its legacy DB2 database that supports the applications that have yet to be modernized. 

Throughout the talk, Scott also pointed to how TSRI has adopted a step-wise model, which modernizes small applications or pieces of an application, tests for validity, then pushes into production before the next applications are transformed. Such a methodology allows the client to continue to develop in the legacy language, maintain a common data set, and minimizes business disruption to almost zero. 

“There’s no big delay. You can continue developing the legacy and we can migrate those legacy applications while the transformations are happening and migrate them into your modern environment,” he said. 

Scott also explains the steps of an automated migration in layman’s terms and how a TSRI transformation integrates cleanly into cloud services like AWS using containerization and microservices. 

We of course don’t want to spoil the presentation by giving everything away, so head over to APN TV and watch for yourself to learn about how automated modernization to the cloud will save your organization time, money, and the headaches from continuing to maintain legacy systems. 

At AWS re:Invent 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) unveiled plans for a new “Mainframe Migration Competency” and announced that TSRI has been identified as a launch partner! AWS recognized that TSRI’s solution — which provides near-100% automation and cloud-specific refactoring — are a huge benefit for organizations seeking reliable, low-risk, and rapid migration to the cloud. Furthermore, TSRI’s proven track record, which includes hundreds of successful modernization projects over more than 25 years, meant that TSRI would be a reliable and knowledgeable technology partner for AWS customers.

From AWS:

“Recognizing the complexity of a mainframe migration, our customers seek proven methodologies, tools, and best practices to empower successful migrations. The AWS Partner Network (APN) plays a critical role in these efforts by providing proven technology products and services for customers’ mainframe migrations.”

TSRI’s model-based solution transforms even very large (tens of millions of lines of code) legacy systems written in languages like COBOL, Fortran, PowerBuilder, Ada, MUMPS, VB6, and more than 30 other languages, into modern applications in cloud-native target architectures. The output is a modern multi-tier application that takes advantage of cloud utilities and scalability.

Now is the time to modernize for the cloud. According to AWS, “more than 70 percent of the Fortune 500 companies still run business-critical applications on mainframes, and many companies and institutions still possess legacy mainframes in their data centers. As a result of constantly evolving customer needs, the demand for modernization has accelerated as companies require increased agility to meet those needs.

“Due to the slow development cycle of mainframes, more companies are migrating to the cloud to enable rapid development and innovation. Furthermore, as mainframe subject matter experts retire and leave the workforce, these companies face an increasing skills gap.

“Coupled with high upgrade and development costs and expensive usage fees, CIOs with mainframes they must maintain are well aware of the business risks to their enterprise. As a result, a growing number of companies are looking to modernize and migrate their mainframe workloads to Amazon Web Services. These migrations enable companies to realize business benefits like an average 70 percent savings in IT infrastructure costs.”

See the AWS blog for more.

We’re excited to start the modernization journey with any organization looking to get off their mainframe and on to AWS! Learn more about how TSRI can help you transform your technology quickly and seamlessly, ensuring you and your application users can make the most of what cloud technologies have to offer.

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TSRI is Here for You

As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years.

See Case Studies

Learn About Our Technology

Get started on your modernization journey today!

New tagline: Software Modernization Assured

New mission statement: Through technical ingenuity, dedication, and collaboration, we automate the modernization of high-value software, advancing organizations into a better business and technology reality.

New vision statement:  Creating a world where organizations aren’t limited by technology.

As we mark our 25th anniversary, the TSRI you see today is a fresh, renewed TSRI. As we embarked upon the celebration of this milestone, we realized that our brand deserved to catch up to the advances the company has made in technology, delivery, and that we needed to better capture a track record of success and client-focus that our team is proud of. For a company that specializes in assuring software modernizations, it was time for form to reflect function.

TSRI’s mission has evolved. While we are known as a company that provides efficient and effective technology modernization, we needed to better communicate that our capabilities, while applicable to the modernization and refactoring of a broad array of legacy computer languages, are matched by our investment in the holistic guidance of our clients through their modernization journey and beyond.

We began with questions. Lots of questions. True to TSRI’s culture, we established our new brand as a team effort. We knew, all the way across the company, who we’ve been and how we show up for our clients: Precise. Dependable. Innovative. Collaborative. Experienced. Proven. But we also wanted our refreshed brand to take us forward. The logo, the colors, the design of our website, the printed materials we distribute… every place we make an impression we put on the table.

Understanding What Our Clients Value!

Our first step was to understand not only our unique brand personality and brand promise, but also to understand our clients. We undertook an exercise that forced us to dig deep—into the culture, how we feel we represent ourselves to our clients, and how we want to show the best of our expanded, collaborative end-to-end services. We explored multiple visualizations to convey the key pillars we knew would describe the evolution of TSRI.

Once we’d established our pillars, we explored what that personality would look like, starting with our new logo.

The Logo

TSRI’s previous logo made a statement: the classic red-black target was intended to imply precision and accuracy, which we do in fact prioritize, in the outcomes of transformations. However, it also confused some people about the mission of our company. We still wanted to maintain that idea of precision while remaining close to our roots. The brand mark, or icon, that was developed, as well as the abstracted moving reticle on our homepage, tells that story. The circular arrows inside the reticle show the forward-moving, iterative processes that make our modernization and refactoring projects highly successful while invoking the limitless horizons a modern codebase can open for our clients. Our clients trust us to think outside of the box as we partner with them to modernize, and they can trust that we will stick around to keep modernizing and support them in the evolution of their systems.

The TSRI word mark itself evokes that feeling of openness while the connected ‘S’ and ‘R’ feels almost space age—definitely futuristic!

Our palette

The two shades of blue that anchor our logo are TSRI's new primary colors.

To us, the navy blue feels like professionalism, steadiness, and establishment. We paired that dark blue with a lighter sky blue to reflect the expansive ideas and experience our technical team and collaborators bring to each and every project.

For our secondary colors, we landed on two lighter grays. These underscore the gravity of the systems we modernize. The soft black, clear and simple, represents accessibility to our clients.

Type

The typeface we chose to represent TSRI’s brand, Montserrat, is modern, refreshing, clean, inviting, and bold — we feel it represents our confidence in our own evolution and dedication to developing technologies and services in the service of our mission.

The Wider Angle

Colors, type, and logos can show off the brand, but more subtle cues guide its implementation. These include the angled lines that show our innovation, our forward thinking, and how we move our clients into the future. We use photos with more of an abstract feel that tell the story of how our products provide precise results, which are inherently designed to help keep project risk at a minimum.

Pulling it All Together

All told, the process of reimagining the TSRI brand took just under three months. While we knew we would end up with a tone and voice that would tell the story of TSRI’s end-to-end capabilities, we were so gratified to have everyone aboard to guide us toward the bold, forward-thinking statement that sets us on the path of our next 25 years.

TSRI is a team that can move you forward, and we feel as though our visual brand now conveys that more accurately. We are dedicated to helping you carry your critical software applications into the future. We are “software modernization assured.”

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TSRI is Here for You

As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years.

See Case Studies

Learn About Our Technology

Get started on your modernization journey today!

"Thales Air Systems Java Flight Data Processing (JFDP) European-E Air Traffic Management (EATMS) approved for operation in late 2010."

Kirkland, WA. (October 15, 2009) – Thales Air Systems (THALES) of France awarded a ‘follow-on’ contract to The Software Revolution, Inc. (TSRI) in April to modernize the Flight Profile Library (FPL), the core of the Java Flight Data Processor (FDP) of THALES Eurocat-E air traffic control system. Under this contract, TSRI automatically translated the FPL from Ada into Java, refactored the Java to remove dead code, refactored Ada generics into Java generics, and detected and refactored global variables to minimize their visibility as Java member data. Modernization of the FPL module completes a project spanning 4-years in which TSRI supported the modernization of three variations of Eurocat-E, comprising approximately 1.7 million lines of Ada code into real time Java. Automated code translation, code redundancy analysis and code consolidation techniques were applied to modernize the three primary variations of the Eurocat (comprising approximately 1.6 million lines of code) with unprecedented economy of scale and scope and with two to one improvement in key code quality metrics according to published case studies. The European aviation authority required automated code transformation be used to minimize introduction of human error during the modernization of the Eurocat system. The transformed Java Eurocat complies with safety requirements of Eurocontrol (ESARR6) mandates governing SoftWare Assurance Levels (SWAL assessment required for ground applications).

Thales Air Systems S.A. is a major global provider of air traffic management systems and The Software Revolution, Inc. (TSRI) is an industry leader in automated legacy system modernization. Thales Air Systems supplies Eurocat-E as the primary air traffic control system in Europe, Asia and Australia where Eurocat is installed at 260 air traffic control centers worldwide. The JFDP air traffic control system is scheduled to commence operation at the end of 2010 at airports all across Europe and Asia. 

Philip Newcomb, The Software Revolution Chief Executive Officer said, “The Software Revolution is very proud to have played an instrumental role in the modernization of the European air traffic control system for Thales. A key to the success of this project was the use of JANUS Studio^®    for automated transformation, refactoring and creation of the Transformation Blueprint ^® to document the products and process. I believe the FAA could dramatically reduce costs as well as its 15-year schedule for the NextGen air traffic control system upgrade through the use of similar methods to those the Europeans have employed to modernize the European air traffic control system.”

For more information about TSRI, visit our web site or contact:

TSRI
Greg Tadlock
Vice President of Sales
Phone: (425) 284-2770
Fax:     (425) 284-2785
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