Migration of a desktop ERP system from Windows Forms to .NET 6

Description

Our client was a company engaged in a full cycle of glasses production and distribution: from buying raw materials and design to sales. The company had its own desktop ERP system written with Windows Forms 10 years ago. At that time, this technology was highly popular for creating Windows desktop apps and server solutions.

Very often companies postpone the process of software migration if their solutions still function. And as a result, developers are more exhausted from dealing with legacy systems than their owners. But there is an obvious relation between modernization and benefits for businesses.

Just like many other companies, our customer hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the necessity to update software before facing serious system downtimes and big problems with its productivity. Due to such issues with the legacy software, it was a real challenge to add even one simple function.
Earlier, the company had only one enterprise and the app was available to all the employees via the local network. But then the company started to expand its business and it became necessary to migrate the app server part to the cloud for making it possible for the employees of different subsidiaries to get access to the data via the internet.

In such a way, the system evolution with the help of .NET Core was significantly easier and more feasible. That’s why the company decided to migrate its system to a newer version of .NET.

Client`s pain and concern

The existing ERP system was developed 10 years ago and we started to notice a dramatic decrease in its productivity.

Our company is expanding and we need to migrate the server side of our software to the cloud for having the possibility to easily provide access to the data to our employees who work at other branches.

Project Team size

Project manager
Business analyst
QA engineer
4 Developers

Solutions

The key to the success of any software migration project is deep analysis, accurate planning, and the expertise of specialists who will conduct the modernization

After a thorough analysis, our specialists found out that some libraries that were used in the system were not ready for support of the latest .NET version. And external providers of components also hadn’t added support and hadn’t ensured compatibility with a new version. Moreover, it was probable that .NET 7 would have hidden vulnerabilities that hadn’t been revealed yet. All this helped us to make a decision to migrate the ERP system to .NET 6. This version ensures outstanding productivity thanks to such characteristics as the speed of task performance and memory allocation.

The key priority for us was the necessity to ensure productivity, maintenance simplicity, and code cleanliness.

Our team chose the agile methodology that combines iterative and incremental development. Thanks to this approach, we managed to gradually implement the updated solution and stay flexible amid the continuously changing requirements. Moreover, we developed a plan for managing risks for eliminating all possible migration pitfalls such as issues caused by inconsistent code or poor documentation, etc.

Technologies

used in the project

C#
Visual Studio
Microsoft SQL Server
ASP.NET

Outcome

After the migration of the legacy system, our client can enjoy full-scale support of multiple libraries from third-party developers, simplified maintenance, and higher efficiency of the code.
Thanks to choosing .NET 6 for migration, we managed to ensure lower expenses on cloud computing services, the highest productivity, intelligent code editing, reliable diagnostic and testing tools, as well as better cooperation within the team.