Software Portfolio Health Check SaaS

Accelerating the Cloud Migration Journey and Optimizing the Path to Application Modernization

Our Strategic Partnership with CAST

Knowsys offers Software Portfolio Health Check Managed Services. This practice is supported by our experienced SME’s and architects. The automated technology employed to deliver these services is through our strategic partnership with CAST.

These services can be provided as a Managed Service at regular intervals over multiple years with pricing advantages from service and software perspectives. The client can subscribe to CAST as SaaS.

CAST is an innovative, automated solution that allows for greater objectivity, faster modernization, and higher quality in your cloud migration and application modernization initiatives.

Knowsys APM Services Through CAST Allows Our Clients To:

Accelerate Cloud Migration Strategy

Rationalize and Optimize their Application Portfolios

Curtail Application Maintenance Costs

Ensure Secure Applications

Measure ADM Vendor Deliverables

Two Views: CAST Highlight and CAST AIP Imaging

With CAST Highlight, clients receive a rapid application portfolio analysis in as little as one week. This is accomplished through automated source code analysis on hundreds of applications and is 5x-30x faster than manual code reviews. CAST allows for smarter portfolio rationalization, fact-based cost optimization, and intelligent technology due diligence.

According to Gartner, organizations can gain an immediate 20% cost savings through application portfolio rationalization. (Gartner Report – 10 IT Cost Optimization Techniques for Private and Public Sector Organizations). In a matter of days, CAST Highlight rapidly identifies which custom applications to keep, consolidate, or retire – based on facts.

In fact, less than 40% of cloud migrations succeed when using subjective, survey-based readiness assessments. (Cloud Migration study by QA-Vector Research).

Lastly, according to Gartner over 90% of organizations use opensource components within their software which introduces security, legal, and obsolescence risks (Gartner Software Composition Analysis Report for Private and Public Sector Organizations). CAST highlight identifies opensource risks across the entire portfolio and prioritizes the most critical vulnerabilities to address first.

CAST Highlight Delivers:

Cloud Readiness (Roadblocks and Boosters);
Software Health (Resiliency and Agility);
Software Composition (OSS Vulnerabilities and IP Risks); and
Privacy Data Detection (GDPR and PII Patterns)

CAST AIP Imaging - Deep Analysis MRI for Software

With CAST Highlight, you got the mile-wide, one-inch deep view of your application portfolio. You got to identify which apps are prime for cloud migration or where vulnerabilities exist. Now what?

With CAST AIP Imaging you get to focus on a specific application (legacy, undocumented, monolithic custom apps). Imagine Google Maps for your architecture. CAST Imaging reverse engineers all database structures, code components, and interdependencies in complex software systems. The resulting architectural blueprints are accurate and interactive.

There are four components of CAST Imaging:

MRI-Imaging – Interactive architectural blueprints from reverse engineering;
CAST Engineering Dashboard – providing insights for monster flaws interception, architecture adherence checks, and structural security findings to prevent outages, data corruption, insider threats, and major re-work;
CAST Health Dashboard – Executive management level insights into quality grades (CISQ, ISO 5055), automated function points, and structural integrity trends to enable objective decision-making, better IT investments, fact-based management of ADM vendors and internal teams.
CAST AppMarq – Benchmark insights for digital leaders to objectively compare their applications condition, their ADM vendor and internal team delivery performance against industry peers.

CAST Imaging enables fast and efficient collaboration among distributed development teams, allowing to transition projects more quickly.

According to an IEEE study, 58% of developers time is spent understanding existing code. CAST Imaging can cut that time in HALF.

65% of applications require rearchitecting to take advantage of cloud.

CAST Imaging enables architects to see how legacy code needs to transform. (Cloud migration study by QA-Vector Research).

CAST Imaging Key Features:

Accelerate application refactoring
Raise your team productivity
Boost developers collaboration.

CAST Imaging - Engineering Dashboard Key Features

Ability to quickly identify multi-component software flaws;
Drill-down to identify specific code location of critical flaws;
Action plans based on optimized list of high impact issues;
Ability to validate against industry standard rules;
Architectural flaws inside the riskiest objects and transactions; and
Insight into why specific defects are occurring and guidelines for fast remediation.

CAST Imaging - Health Dashboard Key Features

At-a-glance summary of your software health in terms of robustness, security, efficiency, changeability, transferability, and quality;
Heatmap to quickly find where you are at highest risk;
Accurate sizing metrics that show what you have to manage and how far you’ve gotten;
Trending analysis to benchmark performance overtime; and
Fast facts on the evolution of your software.

CAST Imaging - Appmarq Key Features:

See where you stand among peers and competitiors;
Perform real due diligence on potential acquisitions;
Avoid over-engingeering applications;
Show business leaders how awesome they are (!);
Make informed decisions (build vs. buy) based on facts; and
Identify where remediation should be prioritized.

Benefits of using Knowsys for your next APM initiative:

The ability to independently verify and validate the cost or value improvements associated with the quality and risk profile of an application. This is a cornerstone to good governance, but few organizations apply this approach to demonstrate objective value and risk. This approach can be used internally, but more importantly it can be used to manage outsourcing vendors to create crisp performance metrics and the fees associated thereof.
Knowsys leverages CISQ (Consortium for IT Software Quality) to mature your company’s APM practices.
CISQ solves the problem of software quality and sourcing by creating objective (industry standard), practical, and quantifiable value associated with software quality.
Historically, software quality has been a nebulous field with unclear and hard to measure benefits and value. With the concepts of technical debt and total cost of ownership beginning to take root in industry, CISQ can now translate these concepts into specific quality criteria, finally closing the loop between quality and financial and risk management. Finally, with CISQ, we now have a common language to speak about software quality the way we do about IT process and governance (COBIT), SDLC (CMM), IT Service Management (ITIL/ITSM), Architecture (TOGAF) to name a few industry standards.

Are any of these a concern for you?

Increasing the speed of delivery without compromising quality in digitizing content, information, and assets for consumption by customers;
Demonstrating cost savings or value of software and applications as they relate to the business strategy;
Justifying the cost of modernization, given an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy by most businesses;
Being able to clearly articulate what technical debt is and how reducing it is tied to cost savings;
Effectively managing the performance of vendors and internal organizations to demonstrate value, risk reduction, and cost reduction in some cases;
Having the flexibility to redeploy staff to different technology platforms based on business needs. Accessing the right talent to enable this flexibility;
Understanding how deficiencies in code quality are compromising information security risk and proactively mitigating this risk before it appears in the newspapers.