MIS Research Center Seminar Series
8:30 AM - 11:00 AM
1st Floor Auditorium, Carlson School of Management

Abstract

This presentation will cover current generation strategic thinking and systems redevelopment techniques to accomplish the modernization of legacy systems infrastructures in large organizations. The speaker, Mike Oara, of Relativity Technologies, will introduce a new methodology called the “Guaranteed Value Phased Approach to Legacy System Modernization.” The basic idea is that legacy systems modernization can be effectively accomplished in four distinct “Guaranteed Value” phases: Documentation, Code Cleanup, Restructuring and Migration. Phasing the transformation of legacy applications is a natural strategy is a natural strategy that mitigates the risk and enhanced organizational value capture associated with modernization projects.

Each phase will have its own timeframe, objectives and deliverables. “Guaranteed Value” means that at the end of each phase a certain value should be achieved by the investing organization. This value should reflect a “reasonable” ROI, and will stand by itself, regardless of whether the modernization project is continued into the subsequent phases. The methodology involves the generation of a number of suggestions for partial or full automation of the application modernization, based on a variety of practical and well known approaches. These include restructuring of code through application partitioning, refactoring and modularization, and different means for identifying dead or obsolete code. Some of the methodologies are less known in the industry and will be discussed in more detail. These include business rule management and obsolete code elimination. Code migration, which has traditionally been hard to automate, will also be discussed, with special emphasis on the practical advice that has come out of real world cases involving different degrees of success. In addition to discussing the high level concepts associated with legacy system modernization, the speaker will also provide illustrations and a demonstration of the kinds of tools that are used in this unique software engineering context.

Biography

Michael Oara is a co-founder and Vice President for Research and Development at Relativity Technologies, Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has 23 years of experience in enterprise software and is an acknowledged expert in automation methodologies for modernization and transformation of legacy applications.

Michael has in-depth experience in the financial services industry, having worked at Chase Manhattan, Morgan Stanley, and CS First Boston. He also founded an IT consulting company offering services to the banking industry. Michael also developed and deployed a complex system incorporating non-linear equations and other mathematical algorithms for the modeling of hedge funds to facilitate balancing risk in Wall Street investment and money market operations.

Prior to working with Relativity Technologies, Michael was Director of Development for Cary, North Carolina-based Seer Technologies, a pioneer in technology for building large-scale client/server systems and legacy modernization software. Michael obtained a Master of Science in Mathematics from the University of Bucharest in 1979 and pursued graduate studies at the Courant Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science at New York University. As a teenager, he received the 1st prize in the Mathematical Olympiad in Romania.

Read more at http://www.relativity.com.

Luncheon

Michael Oara, of Relativity Technologies, has kindly agreed to join interested participants from the MISRC member companies and the Outsourcing Research Project Team and Participants for a luncheon discussion on software application development outsourcing in Russia and Eastern Europe. Mike will be covering the background of outsourcing capabilities and organizational experiences with different vendors from his part of the world. He also has experience with using the services of startup firms that provide these services, as well as a direct knowledge of the people who established these companies and the strategies that they used to build their reputations as reliable provides of outsourcing services.

Please email the Assistant Director, Donna Sarppo, at dsarppo@csom.umn.edu if you are interested in participating. The luncheon will be held in the Humphrey Private Meeting Room, Room B7, in the lower level of the Humphrey building. Thanks for your cooperation.