Assessment
A structured review of the codebase, database, deployment and dependency risk, producing a written picture of what you actually have — including the parts nobody currently understands.
Service
System Modernization
Legacy .NET applications and databases brought back under control — incrementally, without a rewrite that stops the business for a year.
What it covers
The work itself
Framework and runtime upgrades
.NET Framework to modern .NET, WebForms and legacy MVC to current stacks, and the dependency untangling that always turns out to be the actual work.
Database modernization
Schema rationalisation, index and query tuning, moving business logic out of thousand-line stored procedures, and getting migrations under version control.
Performance recovery
Profiling first, then fixing what the profile shows. Most systems described as "needing a rewrite" have three or four specific bottlenecks and a codebase that is otherwise fine.
Incremental extraction
Peeling functionality out of a monolith behind a facade, one bounded piece at a time, so the system keeps running throughout.
Test and deployment safety net
Characterisation tests around current behaviour, then CI/CD — because you cannot safely change what you cannot verify or reliably deploy.
Who it's for
And who it is not for
Companies running a business-critical application built five to fifteen years ago that still works but has become expensive to change, risky to deploy, or impossible to hire for.
Right fit if
- The application runs on .NET Framework and the upgrade keeps being postponed
- Deployment is a manual procedure documented in someone's head
- Nobody remaining wrote the original code
- Performance has degraded as data volume grew
- Business logic lives in stored procedures nobody will touch
- A vendor has quoted a full rewrite and the number is frightening
Not the right fit if
- Systems that genuinely should be replaced by an off-the-shelf product
- Rewrites motivated by preference for a newer framework rather than by a business problem
We would rather lose the project than take one we are the wrong firm for.
What you get
Deliverables, in writing
This list goes into the proposal. If something is not on it, it is not in scope — and we would rather argue about that now than in month three.
- Written assessment with risks ranked by business impact
- A prioritised, costed modernization roadmap
- Executed work in independently deployable increments
- Characterisation tests covering the behaviour that was changed
- CI/CD pipeline and documented deployment process
- Knowledge transfer to your team, recorded
Timeline & engagement
What it costs you in time
Typical timelines
Assessment only
1–2 weeksCodebase and database review, risk register, roadmap and costing. Yours to act on with or without us.
Targeted intervention
3–8 weeksA specific problem — a performance collapse, a framework upgrade, a deployment pipeline.
Phased modernization
4–12 monthsIncremental extraction and upgrade while the system stays in production throughout.
Engagement models
Fixed-price assessment
A defined review producing a written report and roadmap. Deliberately sold on its own, so you can act on it without us if you prefer.
Best for: Always the right starting point.
Fixed scope intervention
A specific, bounded problem at a fixed price once the assessment has defined it.
Best for: Known, contained problems.
Retainer
Continuous modernization alongside your feature work, at a fixed monthly capacity.
Best for: Long programmes where the system must keep evolving during the work.
Related work
What this looks like when it is finished
Retail & Ecommerce
Ecommerce Operations Platform
Orders, stock and couriers in one system instead of three tabs and a WhatsApp group.
The back half of an online store — orders, inventory, fulfillment and courier integration — for retailers whose operations have outgrown their platform.
Sales & Marketing
Custom CRM
A pipeline that matches your real sales process instead of the one your CRM assumes.
A sales pipeline shaped around how your team actually sells — for companies whose process does not fit a generic CRM, and who would rather own the code than rent the seats.
Other services
Custom Business Software
Operational systems built around how your business actually works — not around what an off-the-shelf product assumes.
Learn moreAI & Document Automation
AI applied to the boring, expensive parts of your operation — document extraction, classification and review workflows — with confidence scoring and a human in the loop.
Learn moreDedicated Team
Senior engineers embedded with your team, at your cadence — with the person who writes the code being the person you talk to.
Learn moreFAQ
Modernization — questions we get asked
Should we modernize or rewrite?
Usually modernize. Rewrites fail at a well-documented rate, mostly because the old system encodes years of accumulated business rules that nobody has written down and that only surface when the replacement gets them wrong. Rewriting is the right call when the platform is genuinely dead, when the data model is fundamentally wrong for what the business now does, or when the system is small enough to rebuild in weeks. The assessment tells you which situation you are in, with reasoning rather than a preference.
Can you work on it without stopping our feature development?
Yes, and that constraint shapes the whole approach. Work is sequenced into independently deployable increments, behind facades where necessary, so the system stays shippable throughout. It is slower than a big-bang rewrite on paper and far more likely to actually finish.
Our system is slow. Do we need to re-architect?
Probably not. In most cases a slow system has a small number of specific causes — a missing index, an N+1 query pattern, a synchronous call in a hot path, a cache that was never invalidated correctly. We profile before proposing anything. Re-architecting to fix a problem you have not measured is expensive and often does not fix it.
Nobody here understands the old code. Is that a problem?
It is normal, and it is a large part of what you would be paying for. We work from the code and the database rather than from institutional memory, and characterisation tests capture what the system currently does before anything is changed — including the behaviours that are technically bugs but that the business now depends on.
What if the assessment says the system is fine?
Then we tell you that and you have spent a small amount of money to stop worrying about it. That outcome happens, and saying so is worth more to us than a project we talked you into.
Tell us what your operation actually does.
A 30-minute call, no slide deck. We will tell you whether this is worth building, whether an off-the-shelf product would serve you better, and roughly what it would take.
30 minutes · We reply within one business day.