Modernize Your Legacy ColdFusion App
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In the fast-paced world of web development, legacy ColdFusion applications often become burdensome, piling up technical debt like a Hobbit hoards meals. They suffer from outdated maintenance practices, use obsolete libraries, and experience software degradation. This combination results in inefficient, costly code that hinders business growth, much like how the One Ring burdened Frodo on his journey.
But fear not! TeraTech is here to help with your CF upgrade. We understand these challenges and can guide your business through the treacherous paths of outdated software to the pinnacle of modernization, just as Gandalf guided the Fellowship through Middleware-Earth.
Our ColdFusion modernization services rejuvenate and revitalize your applications, propelling your company into a new era of efficiency and success - leaving legacy CF behind for good.
Understanding ColdFusion Modernization
Left to sit long enough, a CF app can transition from modern to legacy. It no longer supports advances in security, efficiency and performance.
To new developers, legacy apps appear written in an old style of CFML they don’t want to maintain. Left long enough, it becomes a relic of an era of coding that no longer exists.
Eventually, a legacy ColdFusion application can become a poor fit for your company, like an Orc in a beauty contest. Deadwood, spaghetti code, and bugs accumulate, making the application difficult and expensive to maintain.
Your company’s technical debt skyrockets. Adding features that your business users need becomes a challenge.
Updating legacy apps to incorporate modern technologies and new best practices helps eliminate these issues.
Why modernize your legacy ColdFusion app?
ColdFusion modernization updates your legacy CF app. It opens the door to modern technologies and best practices. This makes it easier to add new features and functionality.
Using modern coding tactics via new tools and the robust ecosystem surrounding modern ColdFusion turns a legacy app into a modern digital asset.
Updating your ColdFusion applications to incorporate modern technologies and best practices is like destroying evil Sauron. It eliminates haunting, ever-present legacy issues, helping your apps reach their full potential.
ColdFusion’s stability, ease of use and security are a double-edged sword. One can make great apps that reliably perform day in and day out. Or you can run a veritable beast of an app that handles a hefty workload, keeping your company’s operations running at peak levels.
But CF’s reliability also makes improvements and technologies seem pointless. It works, so why tinker with it? Right? Wrong!
Modernization helps an existing app improve:
- Performance boost: Modernizing incorporates improvements in technology and techniques into your app’s arsenal of tricks to speed it up.
- Scalability: Your app will scale up or down to meet your needs.
- Enhanced security: Up-to-date security best practices and tools protect your company from new hacker exploits and vulnerabilities.
- Simplified maintenance: Modern CF keeps your company up-to-speed with the latest and greatest development tools, making it easier for in-house developers (or contractors) to update or change code.
- Lower costs: Modernized apps avoid costly errors. Fewer bugs need squashing. Less spaghetti code means less untangling when updating your code. You’ll spend less time maintaining a modern app than its legacy counterpart.
- Reliability: Modern apps just keep running. Your users (or customers) won’t have interruptions in service from crashes. If your app generates revenue, this means guaranteed money in the bank.
How TeraTech modernizes your legacy CF app
Just thinking about modernizing an app causes discomfort, especially when the app is mission-critical and running live in production. Modernizing a ColdFusion application is no simple task. Still, it is like the journey to Mordor: worth it in the end. TeraTech assesses your legacy app and then modernizes it for you.
Here is what we do to modernize your CF app:
1) Assess the situation
Before you jump into your codebase, we assess its current state and identify areas where it needs to be improved. We look at the application’s code, database, API use, architecture, and deployment environment. All in a confidential Zoom call with you.
2) Design Modern Architecture
Once the assessment is complete, we make a modernization plan. This plan outlines the steps needed to make your app modern and keep it that way.
A modern CF app needs a modern application architecture and database design. We check both are future-proofed. Then, we work step by step to refactor your code and database to the new design while keeping it running 24/7.
3) Upgrade to the most recent version of ACF or Lucee
We will help you upgrade to the most recent version of ACF (or Lucee). You get the latest hotfixes and security updates. You are eligible for Adobe or Lucee support. Plus, you get access to all the modern CFML features.
4) Clear out deadwood and spaghetti code
We clean out unused or poorly written code. This task often feels like the bane of every developer’s life. It is cleaning up someone else’s mess. Yet it makes your system more efficient and much easier to spot and remove bugs. This also improves security — hackers often find ways into your system via deadwood or messy code. “Deduplicating” similar code also adds efficiency to your app.
5) Modern CF hosting
Your modernized CF app needs a modern hosting solution. There are three main options: cloud, VPS or in-house server.
Cloud hosting using Docker is the most modern and flexible.
Moving to the cloud:
- Gets applications running without the cost of a dedicated server.
- Provides immediate scalability.
- Improves efficiency, productivity, and agility.
Containerizing your CF app using Docker in the cloud with auto-scaling and auto-failover also adds to your app’s reliability.
If your company doesn’t use cloud hosting, over-engineering servers with more RAM and CPU than needed keeps your app stable. If you host with an ISP, use a dedicated or VPS hosting option rather than a shared one.
You should also create provisions for crashes and server maintenance. Clustering servers using a load balancer keeps your app live even if a server goes down. You can cluster both CF servers and database servers.
6) Schedule regular security scans and apply updates and hotfixes
Regular maintenance is the difference between a car that lasts hundreds of thousands of miles and one that ends up at the mechanic several times a year. Apps are no different. For security, you must scan and patch at least monthly.
CF Modernization tips
Follow these modernization best practices.
1) Refactor — don’t rewrite — your code
Your company’s app may be a well-worn, lived-in house. It requires a refactoring - a renovation of old features.
A rewrite is like coming in with a bulldozer, knocking everything down and building a new house from scratch. It causes a lot of delays, costs a lot of money, and poses many risks. Worst of all, it’s totally unnecessary. You can just renovate.
2) Switch to MVC-style code
This goes hand-in-hand with the mandate to refactor, not rewrite. Decide what code belongs in the Model, the View, and how the Controller ties the two together. Get rid of that hard-to-read spaghetti code!
Also, use a modern and maintained CF framework such as
- ColdBox
- FW/1
- CFWheels
Replace unmaintained old frameworks such as a custom in-house one, FuseBox, ModelGlue or Mach II.
3) Maintain consistent server architecture
Consistency throughout a project’s development, testing and live servers decreases the time and money spent on development and maintenance. Docker is an easy way to achieve this. Tools to make it easy on VPS or in-house servers work, too.
4) Stick to best practices
Avoid “hack” fixes. Stick to industry standards. Ignore that annoying little impulse in your brain to find a band-aid solution to a coding headache. It’ll only lay the foundation for future headaches.
Perhaps the most vital point in all of this is that modernization is pointless if you keep adding to your technical debt in the future. Making the right choices upfront and then executing them will avoid headaches further down the line.
Don’t know where to start? Modernize with TeraTech!
Considering modernizing… TeraTech can modernize (and maintain) your legacy CF app. We will assess your application, develop a modernization plan, and execute the plan to bring your application up to date.
ColdFusion modernization is a valuable investment that can help to improve your CF app’s performance, security, maintainability, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
Embark on this modernization journey with TeraTech. Let us guide you through the transformation as surely as Gandalf led the Fellowship. With our expertise, your application will survive and thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
