What is legacy system modernisation?
Modernisation is moving the work an old system does onto something you can change again — getting the business rules, the data and the users off a platform that is no longer safe to touch, without stopping the business.
The old system rarely shows up as a bill. It shows up as a queue: day-long changes that wait a quarter, reports fixed by hand every month, and spreadsheets kept because the system can't give people the view they need.
What modernisation actually involves
Rarely all of it at once — most projects need two or three of these, and knowing which is most of the work.
Getting the rules out
The business logic that matters is usually undocumented and lives in code, in a stored procedure, or in what one person knows. Recovering it is the first job, and on an undocumented system it is the largest one.
Moving the data
Twenty years of records, including the years where the rules were different and the bad rows nobody cleaned up. Migration is not a copy — it is a set of decisions about what to keep, fix, or leave behind.
Replatforming
Off the server under the desk and onto managed hosting with backups, monitoring and a way to deploy without a Saturday. Sometimes this alone buys enough safety to defer the rest.
Rebuilding the interface
The screens people use all day, designed for the work as it is now rather than as it was in 2011. This is where the time saving your team actually feels comes from.
Reconnecting it
The old system probably talks to nothing. A modern one exposes an API, so the accounting system, the CRM and the floor can stop being reconciled by hand.
The honest constraint
The business does not stop for the migration. Everything here has to run beside the old system for a period, which is the single biggest driver of how a modernisation is sequenced and priced.
Replace it, or leave it alone?
Leave it alone if it is stable, supported and rarely needs changing. Age alone is not a reason. Replace it when you can no longer change it quickly, run it safely or get your data out. An unsupported system holding customer data is urgent.
For most businesses the answer is in between: wrap the old system, move the parts that change most, and leave the stable core alone. What we won't recommend is a like-for-like rebuild. It copies old limits into new code.
What does a modernisation assessment cover?
An assessment tells you whether to keep, wrap, rebuild or replace a system, and in what order. We look at what it still does well, what it blocks, what breaks if the one person who knows it leaves, and what it costs to keep running.
Often the answer is to wrap the old system and move one piece at a time.
The old system still works. That is the reason nobody has costed what it takes to keep it running.
What does modernisation cost?
A staged plan with a price per stage, not one number for everything.
Start with a $9,000 workshop
A fixed $9,000 + GST Rapid Insight Workshop works out what the queue of unmade changes is costing you. That number, not the licence, is the business case.
Price it per stage
Scope shows up as you open the old code. A single fixed price for the whole job either hides a big contingency or gets renegotiated.
Budget for the migration
The expensive part is rarely the new build. It is moving the data and running both systems side by side until the new one is trusted.
Amplify or Apex
One system runs as a fixed-price Amplify build. A program across several systems runs as Apex, so the order can change with what the code reveals.
How a modernisation runs
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We go through the code, the database and the actual usage to establish what the system does, what is dead, and which rules the business depends on. Most systems turn out to have a third of their features in genuine use.
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Supported hosting, backups that have been restored from at least once, and monitoring. This is the least visible stage and the one that stops the project being overtaken by an outage halfway through.
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One area at a time, running beside the old system with data flowing both ways until the slice is trusted. Cutovers happen per area, not as a single weekend everyone dreads.
How we deliver modernisation work
Scoping Workshop
An accurate fixed-price quote comes from a scoping workshop that produces a full requirements document, so the price matches the real build rather than the brief. Start with a $9,000 + GST Rapid Insight Workshop: two sessions, with your plan delivered about three weeks later.
Web App Development
A custom web app built in Adelaide typically starts with an Ignite prototype at $25K to $50K over four to eight weeks, then an Amplify build from around $100K at a fixed price. Most builds take two to 12 months, include a 12-month warranty, and you own the code.
CTO as a Service
A fractional CTO — a senior technology leader part-time, owning your roadmap, managing your developers, and making the calls that cost real money when they go wrong.
Rapid Insight Workshop
A Rapid Insight Workshop is two sessions with your key people that map how work really gets done and where time and money are lost. It costs a fixed $9,000 + GST, and about three weeks later you get a prioritised roadmap, a business case and a product specification you keep either way.
Systems Integration
Systems integration typically runs as a fixed-price Amplify build from around $100K, or as an ongoing Apex partnership from $15K a month. It suits operations businesses running five or more systems: we connect your ERP, CRM, warehouse and field systems so nobody retypes data.
Modernisation questions we get asked
Three tests. Can you still change it in a reasonable time, can you still run it safely, and can you still get your data out. A no on safety — an unsupported platform holding customer records — is urgent. A no on change speed is a cost you can put a number on, by counting the requests sitting in the queue and what each one would have been worth. Age on its own is not a reason to replace anything.
Yes, and that constraint shapes the whole plan. The old and new systems run in parallel for a period, with data flowing between them, and each area cuts over when it is trusted rather than everything moving on one weekend. It costs more than a big-bang cutover and it is the difference between a modernisation and an outage.
It is the normal starting point, and it is the largest single variable in the price. We recover the rules from the code, the database and the way the system is actually used rather than from documentation that either does not exist or has not been true since 2016. Budget real time for this stage — skipping it is how a rebuild ends up missing the rules the business runs on.
Buy where the process is standard — accounting, payroll, CRM. Build where the system encodes how you specifically win, which is usually true of the one system nobody can find a product to replace. That is often exactly the legacy system, and it is why it lasted twenty years.
It gets triaged, not copied. Some of it is current and moves. Some belongs to rules that no longer apply and moves in a read-only form. Some is bad rows that were never cleaned and get fixed or dropped on a decision you make, not one we make quietly. The migration is written as code and rehearsed repeatedly, so the real cutover is a rerun of something that has already worked.
Because you inherit twenty years of accumulated behaviour, including the workarounds for problems that no longer exist, and you spend a year to arrive at the same constraints in a newer language. Modernisation is worth doing when it changes what the business can do next — otherwise it is an expensive way to change the font.
Each stage of a modernisation usually starts around $100,000 as a fixed-price Amplify build, so the total depends on how many stages you need. Longer programmes often run as an Apex partnership from $15,000 a month instead. The staging and first price are set in a $9,000 + GST Rapid Insight Workshop.
Each stage typically runs 2 to 12 months, and the old system keeps working while the new one takes over piece by piece. A three-week Rapid Insight Workshop decides the order. Systems nobody fully understands take longer, because the rules have to be recovered before they are rebuilt.
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