Industry Solutions

IT organizations are becoming more agile in order to better align with the business’s needs for faster time-to-market, higher productivity and enhanced customer service. To achieve this agility, the technology and foundation architecture needs to be malleable. Legacy systems, such as Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) applications, are obstacles to IT agility and are ripe for modernization. Moreover, Microsoft has recently announced de-support for VB version 6, forcing IT organizations to deal with their legacy VB application portfolios by replacing them or migrating them to the Java or Microsoft .NET platforms.

Key challenges from continuing to depend on Visual Basic applications include:

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• Business and operational risk due to VB6 de-support by Microsoft
• Increasing cost of maintenance and support for VB
• Depleting talent pool for VB-based technologies
• Lack of interoperability with enterprise application standards
• Inability to scale client/server applications across a distributed, Web or mobile infrastructure
• Inflexibility to integrate with a services-oriented, reusable platform
• Emergence of best-of-breed solutions and best practices based on Microsoft .NET and Java standards that are better alternatives for building next-generation business applications

Virtusa brings a unique, high-value approach to VB modernization. We view legacy applications as key inputs into a software platform strategy for our clients. We find that VB applications, whether replaced, rewritten or modernized, have valuable business logic and business process flows locked up within them, to be harvested for use in software platforms. Our VB modernization approach extracts the real value in these applications as we evolve them into long-lasting components of a broad software platform for our clients.

Our service offerings for application modernization include:

• Modernization assessments and roadmaps
• Target architecture planning and definition
• Migration of VB applications to agile business solutions (using SOA, Web 2.0, .NET and Java)
• Quality assurance and testing
• Application support, maintenance and on-going IT portfolio optimization

We have executed a wide range of engagements to migrate our clients’ applications from VB6.0 to .NET architecture, with proven expertise in VB application modernization projects. Examples of key engagements include:

• Several insurance industry projects with significant insurance application modernization work
• VB6.0 to .NET migration for a real-time retail software vendor
• Complete application migration for a contract and transaction compliance management solution provider