Migrate without stopping the business.
Every company with legacy software has the same nightmare: nobody wants to touch it, it's your most business-critical system, and the original developers left years ago. We've modernised enough of these to know the worst moves — big-bang rewrites that blow the budget, 'just refactor it' approaches that change nothing. We use a strangler fig pattern that replaces the old system incrementally while the business runs on it the whole time.
What's included
- Strangler-fig migration
- Database re-platforming
- Monolith decomposition
- Cloud lift-and-shift
- Zero-downtime cutovers
- Technical debt audit
How we deliver
- 1Legacy codebase audit report
- 2Migration roadmap
- 3Parallel-run strategy
- 4Incremental delivery sprints
- 5Cutover & rollback plan
Technologies we use
- .NET
- Java
- PHP
- Node.js
- Go
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- PostgreSQL
- AWS
- Terraform
Why Origin for Legacy System Modernization
Strangler fig, always — no big-bang rewrites
We've seen big-bang rewrites fail too many times. Every migration we run keeps the original system live until the replacement is proven in production.
Characterisation tests before touching a line
We write tests that document current behaviour — including the bugs other systems depend on — before making any changes. Your safety net exists before demolition begins.
Full observability during the migration
Both old and new systems are monitored in parallel. If the new system diverges in behaviour, we catch it in metrics — not in a customer complaint.
Industries we serve
“We had a 12-year-old PHP monolith running our core business. Origin modernised it over eight months without a single outage. The system is now on AWS and our team can actually maintain it.”
Frequently asked questions
- Our legacy system has no tests — how do you modernise it without breaking things?
- Characterisation tests. Before we change a single line, we write tests that document what the system currently does (including the bugs that downstream systems depend on). This gives us a safety net. Then we introduce changes incrementally, verifying behaviour at each step. Slower than a rewrite, but you don't wake up to production down.
- How long does a legacy modernisation typically take?
- Realistic timelines are 6–18 months depending on system size and how deeply embedded the legacy code is in your operations. We work in phases: audit → characterisation → strangler implementation → migration → decommission. You're running on improved infrastructure within the first few months, not waiting a year for a big switch.
- Can you modernise a system with no source code or documentation?
- We've done it. Reverse engineering a running system through its inputs, outputs, and database is painstaking — but doable. We use observability tools to map request flows and reconstruct a functional spec from observed behaviour before writing any replacement code.
- What's the real risk of a full rewrite versus incremental modernisation?
- Full rewrites are almost always more expensive and take longer than estimated — the original system has accumulated years of undocumented business logic that only surfaces mid-rewrite. Incremental modernisation costs more upfront (running two systems in parallel for a period) but de-risks the migration and lets you keep shipping features while it happens.
- We're on-premise — does modernisation mean moving to the cloud?
- Not necessarily. Cloud is often the right move for cost, reliability, and team velocity — but it depends on your data residency requirements, regulatory constraints, and existing infrastructure investments. We'll give you an honest assessment with numbers, not a vendor pitch.