Artificial Intelligence
Faster and efficient application migration and maintenance through HCLTech's AI Force
Our client is an American multinational fintech company that facilitates online payments across countries.
About the client
The client has a customer base of over 400 million active accounts in nearly 200 markets worldwide. With a business of such scale, improving the maintainability of its mission-critical systems is a business imperative to maximize their uptime and optimize their performance. For that, migrating application codes from a legacy programming language to a more modern platform was necessary.
The client trusted its decade-long partner HCLTech, for quick and successful outcomes in this endeavor.
The Challenge
Prior to migration, the client encountered problems intermittently with its existing C++ applications. They were becoming increasingly difficult to maintain due to their high numbers and the manual effort required for problem resolution and routine updates. High maintenance costs, compounded by inefficient functionality and poor interoperability with modern systems, were other concerns pertaining to legacy systems. Besides, they created performance bottlenecks, limiting the client’s ability to respond to changing market demands effectively.
At a glance, the challenges that impelled system modernization were:
- Maintenance of more than 250 C++ applications
- Inefficient application functionalities
- Poor interoperability with modern systems
- High manual effort
The Objective
Improving the maintainability of business-critical applications was one of the primary targets of the migration initiative.
It was crucial for optimizing performance, maximizing uptime and saving the precious time of the technical staff. By migrating the C++ applications to Java, the client also aimed at reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) and simplifying future modification efforts.
- Migrate legacy C++ applications to Java to improve maintainability and performance.
- Reduce total cost of ownership through streamlined development processes
- Achieve a productivity improvement of approximately 30% to 40% during the migration.
- Automate code migration and testing to enhance operational efficiency.
The Solution
AI Force, HCLTech's patented, GenAI-powered platform for service transformation, played a pivotal role in the modernization exercise. It helped automate the conversion of C++ codes into Java and related testing processes. This minimized the scope of human error involved in mostly manual migrations. While the output did require some customization, AI Force handled the heavy lifting, expediting the whole migration process. The platform also generated unit and system test cases to facilitate the verification and validation of migrated codes.
- Automation of the understanding and conversion of C++ codes into Java
- Elimination of manual errors during migration
- Generation of unit and system test cases
The Impact
The pilot phase of the code migration project ended with promising results. The productivity gain was close to the estimation. The client was satisfied with the outcome and expressed intent of proceeding with the remaining applications. The transition to a more modern coding framework not only improved the maintainability of existing applications but also enhanced the overall performance of client’s internal systems, thereby reducing costs and improving operational efficiency.
In a nutshell, the impact of the code modernization exercise includes but is not limited to:
- 30-40% productivity gain
- Improved maintainability
- Enhanced performance
- Operational Cost savings
- Client leadership reinforced
