Your legacy system is slowing the business down

Modernization doesn't have to be risky, expensive, or disruptive. DevOn helps CIOs and Heads of Engineering to choose the smartest path forward and modernize with confidence.

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Too slow, thanks to legacy systems?

You consider to rebuild the legacy systems, because:

  • Hard to find the engineers that know the languages.
  • Too expensive and too slow to make changes. 
  • Security and compliance risks grow.
  • Integration with modern products becomes painful.
  • Or: the business gets frustrated about the interfaces and long roadmaps.

And you’ve got questions around:

  • What are the options and choices to make?
  • Should I rebuild, do lift & shift, or redesign? 
  • How can AI make it cheaper & better?
  • How can I get a confident budget calculation? 


Let’s have a further look at these questions.

You want to modernize,
You don't want new problems

Hard to find engineers who know the technique

Engineers that still know the old languages are hard to find. Let alone that they also understand the business logic.

Our advice:

This is a very good reason to consider modernizing the legacy systems. With the latest AI models, a lot more is possible and cost-effective. But having (at least) non-tech people that understand the business logic remains crucial.

Your security and compliance risks grow

With increased cyber threats, law & regulations restrictions and business demands, you need to make big choices.

Our advice:

This is a crucial topic and a good reason to consider mondernization. It’s crucial to make a good assessment of your current situation. In the different options that you have, keep this an important reason in making a the right choice.

Changes are expensive and a money pit

You’re under pressure. Your business demands faster and cheaper changes.  But money spent on changes can’t be spent on modernization. You want to stop wasting money.

Our advice:

Make a step-by-step roadmap for the mondernization. Often it’s possible to prevent a big-bang replacement. The iterative roadmap will give you short term benefits while building long-lasting solutions.

Why modernization can feel risky
Most CxOs we talk to, share the same fears

Budget overrun

“How can I prevent a massive budget overrun?”

Business logic

“How can the new system still satisfy business demands and match the crucial business logic?”

Reduce risks

“How can I be sure that the new system has the highest security, compliance and quality?”

Bad experiences in the past

“We tried to modernize once. It was chaos.”
Download our whitepaper: Legacy to Leading Edge – Best Practices for Software Modernization and AI Integration

At DevOn, we have 20+ years of experience
in modernizing software

Quotes from our customers

When you consider modernization, Ask yourself:

What are the main goals?

Cost reduction? Faster development? Become cloud-native? Reduce risks? Find top-engineers?

What technologies?

What needs to be modernized? Mainframe? Older development languages? Database technique?

What are the security requirements?

What are security and governance rules to abide to? What are the new standards?

What are the timelines

As fast as possible? Or proper and future proof? Or?

All existing features?

Often only 30% of the features are mostly used. Do you want to redesign the system? Or copy all the features?

That's why we start with an advice.

And not with a solution

How we help you make the right decision
that will solve your legacy challenges
not create new ones.

With over 20 years of experience, NPS of 95 and attritions below 3%.

We know what’s crucial in making proper modernization choices

Online 45 minute call

We talk about your situation, your legacy challenges. The things you want to solve and the things you want to achieve. 

Analyse your situation, assess your maturity

We do an assessment of your current situation. We look at the maturity of your SDLC, your operations and your services.

Advice

We advice on:

  • Refactor, rebuild, lift & shift or replatform
  • Technologies, Cloud infrastructure, performance, scale
  • Governance model; how to manage the project within budget
  • After care, 24/7 support, maintenance team
Modern systems, happy stakeholders

You’ve made the right choice to modernize. You can easily find the right top-engineers, implement the business roadmap and meet the highest security & compliance standards.

More details around the different choices

Rebuild, lift & shift or redesign

  • Rebuild: all the existing features are rebuild in the new language and architecture.
  • Lift & shift: the existing setup is containerized and moved to the cloud
  • Redesign: a subset of the existing features + new features are implemented.

Considerations

Stable or new features?

What is the current product lifecycle phase? After modernization, do you expect a lot more new features? Or will it probably be stable for the foreseen period?

Considerations

Iterative or big-bang?

Early and often feedback is crucial in modernizing a legacy system. But it’s not always possible to migrate it iteratively.  

Considerations

Frequently asked questions

What is the fastest way to understand the state of our legacy system?

The quickest and most effective step is our 2‑Week Modernization Assessment.

You receive:
  • Architecture analysis
  • Tech‑debt overview
  • Security & quality diagnostics
  • Modernization scenarios (refactor, rebuild, re-platform, strangler pattern, etc.)
  • Clear business case + roadmap
It removes guesswork and provides clarity for your leadership team.

ou’ll receive:

  • A quick context check: tech, teams, architecture
  • Identification of your biggest blockers
  • The best modernization option for your situation
  • A recommended next step (typically the 2‑week assessment)
  • A realistic view of risks, costs, and timelines
It’s not a sales call — it’s a clarity call.

It depends on:

  • The amount of technical debt
  • Business risk tolerance
  • Speed of change required
  • Team maturity
  • Architecture constraints
  • Market pressure
In many cases, the smartest approach is hybrid: stabilize the core, decouple high‑value domains, then rebuild or replace incrementally.
We help you choose the path that minimizes risk and maximizes business impact.
Because we enforce excellence at every step:
  • Only top engineers (1 in 20 hired)
  • Above‑market pay → long‑term retention
  • Strong coding standards & peer reviews
  • Full CI/CD, automation & DevOps practices
  • AI‑assisted engineering
  • Dutch directness: no surprises, clear agreements
  • Stable teams (many stay with the same customer for years)
Better practices = faster, higher‑quality delivery.
 

Yes.

Our teams work across all modern stacks and all cloud platforms:
  • Java, .NET, Python, Node, React, Angular, Kotlin, Go, C++
  • Azure, AWS, GCP
  • Databases, messaging, event-driven, serverless, microservices, APIs
Whether you need to rebuild a core platform or lift‑and‑shift to cloud, we can handle it.

This is a DevOn USP:

  • Developers stay years with customers
  • We pay above market
  • We invest heavily in continuous training
  • We hire for culture, communication, and ownership
  • We offer both Dutch and Indian senior engineers
  • Nearshore + offshore ensures 24h delivery cycles when needed
Stability is a leadership priority for us.

Absolutely.

We can coach, upskill and support your teams through:
  • SDLC assessments
  • Coding practices & architecture training
  • Unit testing & TDD
  • Platform engineering & DevOps
  • Security & test automation
  • Training on Copilot, AI engineering & AI agents
  • Agile & DORA optimization
We enable your team — not replace it.

Three things:

  1. Clarity before coding
    We never start building until the business case and modernization approach are solid.
  2. Engineering excellence as the default
    AI, DevOps, automation, clean code, architecture — embedded in every sprint.
  3. Partnership mindset
    An NPS of 95 shows CIOs trust our transparency, speed, and culture.

Stop wasting revenue on legacy systems.

Start with a modernization that simply delivers great software