Bikini-clad Gold Diggers are everywhere in the Modernization Game

But you won’t see them here!

No wonder it’s a low-trust world. Everyone will tell you what you want to hear, to get your business. The vendor’s job is to get as much money out of you as they can. Leave nothing on the table! But there’s some good news – we can help you.

MAKE can do an estimate on a full-blown legacy modernization project that is remarkably accurate, based on just a few high-level metrics, and get it back to you in two business days. How can we do this? Well it’s a bit embarrassing, but we are geeks. Process Lovers. Methodology Wonks. And we’ve built a really simple and accurate estimation model based on our methodology and historical project actuals that lets us wrap some numbers around a modernization project really quickly. Hey, modernization is all we do!

So take that estimate and use it to beat the crap out of your vendor. Be our guest! And if they don’t like it, refer them here.

But wait a minute, you might be asking yourself, isn’t MAKE a vendor? Why should I trust MAKE?

Well for starters, we’re the only company you will find willing to give you an estimate up front on a project of this complexity and magnitude. So you can tell we’re confident, we’re experts, and we’re not trying to squeeze you for every last nickel. Secondly, we would look pretty foolish if we gave you an outlandish, criminally high estimate for modernization (like the ones you’ve probably already got on the table) because our whole story is based around using our methodology and tools to lower the risk of these complex, failure-prone projects and thereby lower the cost as well. It’s in our best interest to tell you the truth, and give you a good price, and stick to it!

And let’s be honest – if you like our price better than the ones you’ve got, we would like your business!

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Go ahead – getting the estimate will require 5 minutes of your time if you know your system pretty well, and you might just be shocked!

- Tom Metzger

Stop calling it “modernization” if you’re not modernizing anything!

OK does anybody care any more what words mean?

Ever So Chic!

Looking around the web for “modernization” is a fascinating exercise. (And considering where I work, you can bet I do this a lot.) The term has been used to describe so many different things, in a legacy software context, that it has become virtually meaningless. It should be used only when something that is not modern gets turned into something that is modern! So simple!

For example, if your kitchen has a backsplash of textured orange tiles from the 1970’s, modernizing that kitchen means you need to get rid of those tiles, and replace them with something that is not heinously outdated. Painting over them with latex does not count. The original nasty tiles are still present.

When MicroFocus talks about modernizing, it’s exactly the same thing – they are explicitly proposing to leave your COBOL where it is, and maybe slap on a new front-end to keep the users from open revolt. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but it’s not “modernization.” Here’s the litmus test: are the nasty orange tiles still on your backsplash? Uh… yes. The Word Police should head over to MicroFocus and give them a stern talking-to.

And what about BluePhoenix, “The Legacy Modernization Company?” Most of what they do is mechanical transformations from one language to another. Put to COBOL in one end, get Java out the other end. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But look closely at that new backsplash my friends – you can still clearly see the nasty orange tiles, no matter how hard you scrub. Because when you translate source code from one language into another, you can not change the structure of that code. Computers just are not that smart yet. Give it 50 years, and maybe Artifical Intelligence will be up to the challenge. In the mean time, anyone who tells you different is lying. Again, I’m not saying there’s no value in putting your COBOL through a Java meat-grinder, especially if your mainframe is going away or something, but can you call that “modernization” and keep a straight face? Word Police: All Points Bulletin – BluePhoenix needs a dictionary.

So people, unless we love anarchy, let’s be careful what we call things.

- Tom Metzger