D2C apparel collective
- Challenge
- WooCommerce on shared hosting could not survive peak season.
- Simplileap solution
- AWS blue-green migration with Redis sessions.
- Outcome
- Zero lost orders at cutover.
// Build: Modernisation
Legacy modernisation without stopping the business
Phased migration from end-of-life stacks, characterisation tests, strangler fig patterns, database normalisation, and incremental cutover so teams ship features while the platform improves.
// Process
How we approach legacy modernisation
Modernisation is risk management as much as engineering. Every phase has a rollback plan, a success criterion, and a communication plan.
01
Assessment & Risk Register
Technical audit of the existing stack, infrastructure, database schema, integration points, and business-critical paths. We produce a risk-ranked modernisation map with cost/benefit estimates for each phase.
02
Characterisation Tests
Before touching production code, we write characterisation tests that document what the system currently does. These become the safety net for migration, any change that breaks existing behaviour is caught before it reaches users.
03
Strangler Fig Migration
New functionality is built on the target stack while the legacy system continues running. Traffic is migrated incrementally, by route, by feature, or by user segment, so there is no big-bang cutover risk.
04
Database Migration Strategy
Schema normalisation, ORM migration, data type corrections, and index review, done without locking tables on a live production database. Dual-write patterns and read-replica migrations where needed.
05
Dependency & Security Cleanup
End-of-life runtime upgrades (PHP 7 → 8, Node 14 → 20, Python 2 → 3), dependency updates, CVE remediation, and security header review. Done in controlled batches, not all at once.
06
Handover & Team Enablement
Updated documentation, runbooks, deployment guides, and knowledge-transfer sessions so the internal team owns the modernised platform with confidence.
// Why incremental wins
Big-bang rewrites fail. Here is what works instead.
The graveyard of software projects is full of "let's rewrite everything from scratch" initiatives. They take 2× as long as planned, lose critical edge-case knowledge that only existed in the old codebase, and produce a new system that is less stable than the one it replaced.
The strangler fig pattern and characterisation testing approach let teams migrate safely: the business keeps running, each migrated piece is validated, and rollback is always available. The result is a modernised platform with institutional knowledge preserved.
// Risk controls
- Characterisation tests before any code changes
- Feature flags for traffic routing between old and new
- Dual-write patterns for database migrations
- Rollback criteria defined per phase
- SEO and redirect validation at every cutover
- Performance baseline before and after each phase
- Stakeholder review at each migration gate
// In practice
How legacy modernisation engagements run
Modernisation starts with a strangler map: which URLs, integrations, and data stores move in which phase, with redirect preservation and rollback criteria signed before cutover. We have shipped zero-downtime WooCommerce migrations and private-subnet hardening without customer-facing 5xx — the same discipline applies to Joomla, Drupal, and monolith-to-Next.js moves.
// Stack & frameworks
Stack we use for this
Frontend
- Next.js App Router
- React 18+
- Tailwind CSS
- Core Web Vitals tuning
Backend & data
- Node.js / Python APIs
- PostgreSQL
- Redis caching
- REST & GraphQL
Operations
- CI/CD pipelines
- Docker / Kubernetes
- Observability
- Security hardening
// Delivery
Simplileap execution framework
01
Architecture mapping
Dependencies, API contracts, compliance constraints, and performance budgets documented before sprint one.
02
Secure sprints
Two-week increments with GitHub access, demo recordings, and QA checkpoints, client visibility at every stage.
03
QA & handover
Automated tests on critical paths, security review, runbooks, and knowledge transfer to your team.
// Proof
Real deployments from Bangalore
Digital insurtech API
- Challenge
- Production EC2 in public subnet with open SSH, audit mandated private placement.
- Simplileap solution
- ALB fronting, NAT Gateway egress, staged ENI cutover.
- Outcome
- Zero customer-facing 5xx during migration.
// Engagement models
How teams engage us
Currency
| Package | Ideal for | Investment | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website or app design / build | Mid-market B2B | ₹75K – ₹12L |
|
| Product MVP | SaaS & startups | ₹8L – ₹25L |
|
| Legacy modernisation | Regulated industries | Phased proposal |
|
// Company and service positioning
Company and Service positioning is reviewed for production delivery standards by Harsha Parthasarathy (Co-Founder, Strategy & Operations 24+ years IT veteran, IBM, Global Delivery, Program Management) and Keshav Sharma (Co-Founder, Engineering and Lead Architect, Full-stack engineering, product delivery and technical standards).
CIN
AAU-8582
Startup India
DIPP83124
Founded
November 2020
Office
Residency Rd, Bengaluru, India
// FAQ
Legacy modernisation questions
Should we rewrite or modernise incrementally?+
Almost always incrementally. Big-bang rewrites have a poor success rate, they take longer than estimated, lose institutional knowledge, and create a window where neither the old nor new system is reliable. The strangler fig pattern lets you migrate path by path, validate each piece, and roll back if needed.
How do you migrate a legacy database without downtime?+
We use dual-write patterns (write to both old and new schema simultaneously), read-replica migration, blue-green database deployments, and feature flags to cut traffic over. Downtime windows are negotiated per migration phase and kept to minutes, not hours.
What technologies do you migrate from and to?+
Common migrations: CodeIgniter/CakePHP/Zend to Laravel, PHP 7 to PHP 8, jQuery-heavy SPAs to React/Vue, Python 2 to Python 3, monolith to service APIs, on-premise servers to cloud. We evaluate the target stack based on your team's skills, operational model, and long-term requirements.
How do you handle SEO continuity during a migration?+
URL structure review, redirect mapping for changed routes, structured data migration, meta/canonical re-verification, sitemap updates, and a crawl comparison before and after cutover. We treat SEO continuity as a hard requirement, not an afterthought.
Ready to scope your next initiative?
Share your goals with our Bangalore team. We respond within one business day with a clear path from discovery to delivery.