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Forte Migration

Styrone Inc' Migration Services Portfolio

  • Migration Assessment
    • Application rationalization, inventory identification, migration strategy definition, migration roadmap definition, POC

  • Application Re-Engineering
    • New/improved business functionality and operation
    • Reverse engineering, POC, partial or full redevelopment, warranty support, maintenance support

  • Technology Migration
    • Language/code migration, OS migration, database migration, user interface
      migration
    • 4GL/3GL to Java or .NET

  • Architecture Migration
    • Legacy to Web Services
    • Any to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

 

The time to move out of your Forte (UDS) applications is NOW! Continuing in Forte is no longer an option considering that Sun Microsystems has announced End-of-Life for UDS. Applications based in Forte present danger of being a business liability, with impending end-of-life of Forte. Sun Microsystems also encourages UDS users to migrate their applications to J2EE, with the help of Sun’s preferred migration partners – Styrone Inc is one of the preferred migration partners of Sun.

The considerations that make a migration - from Forté to open standards - a business imperative today are:

  • There will be no further upgrades or developments on Forte.
  • Sun’s support of Forte has ceased for most platforms, databases.
  • The already dwindling Forte resources community is almost invisible now
  • UDS applications may not be able to accommodate future technological and business requirements
  • Migration from Forte to open standards will enable protection of your investment and ensure future profitability

While the reasons for moving out of Forte are obvious, for some, it is a rather difficult decision to choose between migration and re-write.

Considering the fact that most Forte systems have been developed over a long period of time and with substantial investments, it is prudent to preserve the investments to a great extent. Migration involves substantially lesser effort and lower costs compared to re-write. Also, using comprehensive set of automated tools of Styrone Inc, Forte migration is very accurate, fast, and cheaper. Styrone Inc migration methodology offers as significant savings for re-architected solutions (such as thick-client to thin-client) as for straight (one-to-one) migrations.

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Automated Tools

Styrone Inc uses a suite of proprietary tools for Forte Migration. The suite of tools for Forte Migration include:

  • F2J Analyzer™Tool: To analyze the complexity and size of the Forté application to precisely estimate the effort involved in migration.
  • F2J Miner™ Tool: To reverse engineer Forté application and to extract program specifications and generate application flow diagrams and sequence diagrams of the existing Forté applications.
  • F2J Code Converter™Tool: To auto-generate Java/J2EE code from the Forte code.
  • F2J GUI Designer™Tool: To auto-generate presentation layer from Forté to equivalent in J2EE for largely similar look and feel.
  • F2J Framework Libraries: Compilation of several standard libraries, that help maintain familiarity between original Forte in J2EE world.

Styrone Inc Automated Tools have been designed to greatly enhance the speed and accuracy of migration, including migration of the Business Layer, Service Layer and Presentation Layer. Our tools work for all versions of Forte. The tools generate J2EE server code which can be run on any J2EE-compliant application servers such as SunOne, Websphere, Weblogic, Jboss, Oracle iAS etc. Styrone Inc tools can work with both thick-client and thin-client applications.

The tools are the culmination of several years of consulting experience in UDS, J2EE and .NET environments by our consultants. The tools help in the automation at every stage of the migration process, towards leveraging existing investments in UDS. Styrone Inc tools have been developed with over 25 person-years of effort with some sizeable ongoing commitment for further improvement.

Forte migration with Styrone Inc automated tools has proven to effect cost-savings upto 65% as compared to re-write.

Please CONTACT US for scheduling a demo or presentation on our tools and migration methodology.
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Methodology

Forté applications usually provide business critical functionalities and are therefore often complex. Styrone Inc follows a mature and well-tested approach to migrate Forte applications, which is also consistent with evolving business needs during the migration cycle. The migration approach followed by Styrone Inc completely eliminates Forté from the production environment.

Our approach is to provide a complete and comprehensive solution for the migration using –

  • proprietary migration tools,
  • well-tested methodology,
  • and experienced consultants

While Styrone Inc automated Forte migration tools guarantee significant savings in effort and costs, our proven and perfected ‘UDS Migration Process’ is equally important for successful UDS migration Be it scoping the project, or selecting a suitable candidate for proof-of-concept (PoC), or validating target architecture, or slicing the application for allowing the changes in the source application while the migration is under progress - our process takes care of it all. Our migration methodology centers around “Tools – Process – People” philosophy.

Styrone Inc migration approach consists of –

  • Migration Planning and Assessment (including application slicing model)
  • Architecture Migration using compatible architecture patterns and design patterns suitable for target environment.
  • Source Code Migration using automated migration tools followed by manual re-factoring
  • Services and Business layer Migration to equivalent in J2EE using automated tools
  • GUI Migration to equivalent in J2EE using automated tools
  • Unit testing, system testing, user-acceptance testing for each vertical Slice
  • Parallel co-existence of Forte and J2EE systems during migration cycle
  • System testing and user-acceptance testing for the entire migrated application
  • Deployment of migrated system in production environment

Our migration methodology ensures that application does NOT have to be frozen during the migration process.

J2EE or .NET?

The rise of WebServices has seen both J2EE and .NET assuming prominence as standards for future computing leadership. Both offer similar capabilities in many respects, and are backed by industry leaders. There is a general consensus among the IT community that both standards offer comparable technological capabilities and price/performance. Although there is a wide spread belief that .NET scores well for GUI intensive applications while J2EE is considered a natural choice for back-end intensive applications, at Styrone Inc, we have been able to migrate different kinds of applications into both J2EE and .NET.

At Styrone Inc, we believe that the choice between J2EE and .NET is more of a corporate strategy rather than a technology choice at application level. We offer tools, process and experienced people for your migration initiative, for both J2EE and .NET
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