Fortis Bank
I consider Synchrony Systems a professional company.
They put down a challenging planning and stuck to it.
Their knowledge of the subject matter is impressive.
To them, a deal is a deal.
What I can say, is that the size of the Smalltalk system you converted to java was once estimated at 4.5K functions points (fp).
Assuming it would take 10 man-hours to develop 1 fp, development of the system would take 45K man hours.
Using an all in price of $100 per hour, the system would cost $4.5M to develop.
The alternative for us would have been a development from scratch, and would have meant a cost of about $4.5M.
This also does not include additional cost, effort and time for user acceptance testing and time to put a system into production.
Geert Hids
Division Manager, IS/CFC of Fortis Bank
Role: Smalltalk to Java Modernization Project Sponsor
It was in a word refreshing to work with Synchrony Systems.
They make good on their initial planning and yet show flexibility in accommodating changes in their work process to match ours.
In terms of quality delivered I doubt any other firm would have been able to migrate our system with this result: live within a year and no issues left to speak of.
All in all a great atmosphere during the project with good support, and even better results. Well commended!
Evert Jan de Groot
Project Manager
Role: QA and Acceptance
Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW)
In the spring of 2004 Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), one of the largest banks in Germany, embarked on a project to migrate their ObjectStudio (formerly Enfin) application to VisualAge for Smalltalk. The application in question was ProFIS; an LBBW strategic application comprised of 1,700 views and 5,000 classes. A key condition of the project was that the ROI should be attained within two years therefore a manual migration was ruled out.
Tricept Informationssysteme AG, a strategic partner of LBBW for application development, was entrusted with a feasibility study. After intense research Tricept engaged with Synchrony in an evaluation of Synchrony's migration processes and technology (SMT) and the decision was made to perform the LBBW migration project using Synchrony's methodology and tools.
The migration project began in June 2004. During the project the strengths of SMT, particularly in the definition of complex changeover rules and in the adaptability of the system, were surfaced. A large challenge of the project was addressing the continual evolution of the original application. This requirement was superbly supported by both Synchrony's methodology and SMT which enable an iterative process of merging migrated code with ongoing newly developed code. The entire migration project was successfully executed in less than one year within the allotted budget.
We are absolutely confident about Synchrony and SMT as a migration solution. The strength of the migration capabilities - along with support for complete refactoring and a change of the application design - was instrumental in us founding a strong partnership with Synchrony for the German speaking region
Michael Vösgen,
CTO, Tricept Informationssysteme AG
Columbia University
In May 0f 2000 Columbia University contracted Synchrony Systems to upgrade our AP/CAR (Accounts Receivable) application to VisualWorks version 5.i. AP/CAR is a Columbia University internal accounts receivable application. We quickly encountered a major setup when we were informed that Cincom had reinstated runtime license fees for VisualWorks version 5.i. With over 2,000 internal users of AP/CAR it was obvious that incurring annual runtime licenses would have made the use of VisualWorks 5.i cost prohibitive.
Synchrony proposed migrating the application to VisualAge for Smalltalk (VAST). The cost of the migration would quickly pay for itself as VAST had no runtime license fees. Within six months Synchrony successfully completed the migration and it was released to production four months later. Synchrony's consul was instrumental in helping us find a cost effective solution that satisfied the needs of the business unit and their migration expertise helped us reach our goal in a well-managed predictable manner.
"If there is something you can call a panacea, it would be the migration tools that Synchrony brought to the table. It was a pleasure to work with the Synchrony team and their specialized migration tool that employed artificial intelligence that actually learned our translation rules during the migration of our application to the new platform. We deployed to VAST on time and within budget, largely because of the efforts of the Synchrony Consultants. "
David Balducci
CUIT Technical Consultant
Joan Richards
CUIT Manager
Columbia University
I have always found Synchrony Systems to be a reliable, high-quality source of technical consulting in Smalltalk and Java. Whether it's been Smalltalk or Java development, object-oriented analysis and design, frameworks development, or various flavors of platform migration, Synchrony has demonstrated a depth of knowledge and experience that has matched or exceeded the capabilities of much larger organizations. It has been a comfort to know that no problem, however thorny, large or small, has been beyond the ability of Synchrony's experts to solve.
We have found Synchrony to be flexible and creative in providing solutions to us. We have used them to provide customized OOAD training adapted to our staff's needs, application architecture and development for an authorization rule framework , and Smalltalk language migration. In all these cases, our expectations were met or exceeded. We wouldn't hesitate to use Synchrony's services again and we're happy to recommend them to others.
Jonathan Markow, Manager
Administrative Information Services
Columbia University
In the early 1990s Zoologic began as a venture group within Banker's Trust developing interactive CBT courseware for financial professionals. Smalltalk was the technology of choice and allowed Zoologic to develop a unique, highly interactive set of courseware used by many large financial institutions. This technology served Zoologic well and the success led to Zoologic emerging as a privately owned company.
By the year 2000 Zoologic was expanding and the client base required a zero install application consistent with the security practices of the financial industry. Zoologic engaged Synchrony to analyze the Smalltalk application and define a new architecture based on a web browser client and a J2EE based application server. Synchrony was able to use their SMT (Smalltalk Migration Technology) to rapidly define a sound migration path which created a predictable and manageable project.
When the project was approved Synchrony integrated with the Zoologic development team and played a number of different roles in the project, ranging from consultants to development engineers and test specialists. The project absorbed new market requirements but was still delivered within the scheduled timeframe of nine months. The destruction of a number of client facilities by the 9/11 attacks gave an additional urgency to release the new product rather than re-installing the legacy Smalltalk solution. The detailed analysis which had been put into the migration allowed Zoologic and its clients to minimize the field test period and bring the new system into rapid deployment with zero system issues.
Because the architected application platform designed by Synchrony was well designed, Zoologic was able to take over the development and maintenance of the application and develop a new application for "financial reference searches," called ZooFiRST.
Zoologic entrusted Synchrony with development of its business platform and Synchrony delivered an application platform which gave Zoologic a significant competitive advantage in the e-learning business.
Allen Claxton
VP Operations and Development
Zoologic Inc.
IQ Financial Systems
In the early 1990s IQ Financial Systems (IQFS) began as a venture group within Banker's Trust. The focus was on developing an industry standard commercial loan application named Loan IQ. Object Studio Smalltalk was chosen as the underlying technology. In the late 1990s support for Object Studio, particularly on Windows/NT, was in question so the decision was made to move the code base to VisualAge for Smalltalk (VAST). This was no small task as Loan IQ consists of more that 2,000 views and over 150,000 methods.
The original attempt at moving Loan IQ to VAST was done by implementing a new application framework in VisualAge, which essentially was a total rewrite. The conversion team included dozens of senior developers and the project lasted for more than two years and cost millions of dollars. It was eventually abandoned as it became clear that this rewrite effort would require two additional years at best to complete.
Despite the failure to migrate from Object Studio to VisualAge, it was still strategically important for IQFS to migrate to IBM VisualAge Smalltalk. Synchrony was brought in to discuss the possibility of migrating Loan IQ to VisualAge within a significantly more constrained budget and timeframe. After they performed their standard Migration Analysis their proposal fit the time and budgetary constraints.
Synchrony was able to successfully migrate the entire application within a year using only 4 resources - a drastic difference in time and cost from the original effort. Their SMT migration technology supported our ongoing development allowing us to continue delivering new versions of our software to customers in Object Studio while the migration was taking place. Five months after the migration was completed IQFS went live with the first VisualAge version of Loan IQ.
Working with Synchrony over the years, on this project and many others, has always been a pleasure. The Synchrony team's professionalism and reliability has been a key factor in our decision to work with them on this critical project and we were very satisfied with the results. We look forward to continuing to work with them for many years to come.
Ken Katz
Director of Development
IQ Financial Systems
NationsBank
Dear Synchrony Systems:
I am writing in reference to the Digitalk Smalltalk to VisualAge Smalltalk migration services that your company performed in 1998. Our company was extremely pleased with the results of the migration and would like to take this opportunity to commend the software engineer assigned to this project by your company.
Our team was tasked with converting three of our Smalltalk applications for Year 2000 compliance. These tasks had to be completed within a 6-month timeframe in order to meet our mandate by the end of the year. Without your services, I believe that goal would not have been met. Each phase of this project (from prototyping a version of the migrated system to delivering the migrated system) was completed on time and successfully. The Synchrony Systems' consultant engineer assigned to this project, was the key in completing each phase of this project successfully. Her knowledge of the Smalltalk Migration Technology tool and VisualAge Smalltalk enabled our team to not only learn, but also greatly aided us in implementing technical solutions to problems encountered throughout the project. In addition, her personality and attitude made her "fit right in" with our existing Smalltalk team.
I can say with full confidence that I would not have any reservations about recommending Synchrony Systems, Inc. for VisualAge Smalltalk migration services.
Sandra Sivels
Vice President
Client/Server Smalltalk Applications Team Leader
NationsBank
First Union National Bank
In 1995, when we decided to make IBM our Smalltalk vendor of choice we also knew that we would have to have a strategy for migrating all of our existing Digitalk Smalltalk applications to VisualAge. With several applications covering different Business Units at the Bank we knew we would have to have a product that could reduce our porting effort in half and we really were shooting for 70% of the effort to be automated. IBM gave us several companies to contact for proposals on development of such a tool. We chose Synchrony Systems. Their overall understanding of both the Digitalk and the VisualAge implementation of Smallalk along with their ability to articulate the details that would be involved in porting clearly made them our vendor of choice.
The first phase of SMT, Smalltalk Migration Technology, was delivered on time and used in migrating two of our smaller applications being used in the Commercial Bank. One application was approximately 200 classes with approximately 40 user interfaces and the other was approximately 500 classes with approximately 75 user interfaces and was basically a 3270 EHLLAPI front end. On these migrations we realized 60 to 65 percent increase in productivity using SMT. We chose to do these migrations by ourselves, however, the staff at Synchrony Systems was always available to us for help, and very good at incorporating new changes we needed in a timely manner. We definitely learned more about VisualAge from the use of SMT and the help from Synchrony Systems than we did in our Introduction to VisualAge classes. With the success of completing these two migrations, and the relationships built with Synchrony Systems, we have laid the groundwork for being able to schedule and estimate well how long it would take to migrate the rest of the applications we have at the bank over the next one to two years.
Lynette Temple
Object Technology Consultant
First Union National Bank
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