Delphi Software Migration

Your software could be written using Delphi 5 or Delphi 7 and may still work correctly. But we have to think about future risks, especially if you provide your software to the clients. We are talking about the risks explained by the following cases:

• Each new Windows version can break some existing functionality, especially in the UI part;
• Some interfaces or APIs can be obsolete;
• You don’t have access to the latest operating system features or their implementation costs too much;
• 3rd-party components vendors stopped providing support of your Delphi version;
• Or even some vendors don’t exist anymore, but you still need updates for such components.

This list is not full, we think you can add your own risks and pains. At Softacom we specialize in such a type of migration that presupposes migration of your software from a legacy Delphi version like Delphi 5, 7, and other versions to an up-to-date one. We have our own development process (framework) which we have been polishing for years and we can migrate your software in the most feasible way, if we make a decision to migrate it at all. We offer migrations not in all cases. After initial business analysis we can offer development from scratch, migration to another architecture, re-engineering, etc.

There are many reasons to stop using in-house servers and migrate to the cloud. But all of them have economic character. You should not confuse cloud with shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated hosting server. An average cloud project is way more complex and complicated than any type of hosting migration. Cloud migration is the process of outsourcing server maintenance & support by moving your in-house hosted software to the server hardware and infrastructure belonging to other companies.

We are not blind and if we see that legacy software has a really obsolete legacy architecture we can offer to divide a system, e.g. for a multi-tier system and migrate some parts to other technologies and platforms.

It can be applied to server-side solutions, web and cloud solutions. For instance, you have legacy Delphi software with a Windows client and direct access to on-premises DB, but now you want to have a mobile app client for your employees. In this case, we can change the architecture, extract its business logic and implement it as a cloud-based REST API service developed in Delphi, PHP or ASP.NET (it depends on the requirements for the deployment platform, of course), then we leave a Delphi UI client and develop a new mobile app client using Firemonkey or a native mobile apps tool like XCode or Android Studio.

This is just a simple example. In real life, we have to solve a lot of more complicated issues and make a lot of decisions. When we offer some solutions, we try to predict and to manage the risks which may appear in 1, 3, 5 years from now.

Maybe you have cool software, but it works only for desktop Windows machines and now you want to have access to it from a web browser? If it is so we can migrate your software to a web technology. Or maybe you want to add mobile devices support? In this case we can migrate your software to native or cross-platform mobile app technologies.

Data migration as part of Delphi software migration to another deployment platform can include:

• Migration from in-house database to cloud-based database (Ms SQL Server to Microsoft Azure or AWS);
• Migration from one in house configuration to another one (ISAPI to Apache);
• Migration from shared hosting to cloud (Bluehost to Microsoft Azure or AWS web app);
• Migration from one cloud to another one( Microsoft Azure to AWS or vice versa); Etc.

This list is much longer, as it describes what services that include Delphi software migration to another deployment platform we can offer at Softacom.