Reducing Legacy Replatforming
Time and Cost with AI-Powered Modernization
Our client is a century-old insurance and financial services provider offering a broad portfolio of products including group and individual disability coverage, life insurance, dental benefits, retirement plan services, and annuities. With a strong market reputation and a long-term commitment to innovation, the organization set out to modernize its IT landscape to support future growth, cloud-native performance, and enterprise-wide agility.
The challenge wasn’t ambition. It was finding a viable path forward.
The Opportunity
The client had more than 20 legacy, business-critical applications earmarked for modernization — but traditional replatforming models couldn’t justify the investment. High costs, extended timelines, and technical risk had kept transformation efforts on hold for years.
The core blockers:
- No cost-effective modernization path Traditional approaches were too slow and resource-intensive to scale across 20+ systems
- Limited visibility into legacy systems Undocumented code made it risky to replatform or retire applications without extensive manual discovery
- Perception problem with existing vendors Internal teams saw incumbent partners as sustaining the status quo, not enabling innovation
- No proof of concept Leadership needed clear, measurable results before committing to a full modernization roadmap
This wasn’t just a technical challenge. It was a strategic bottleneck. Legacy maintenance costs were rising, cloud adoption timelines were slipping, and the organization needed a repeatable model it could trust at scale.
The Solution
Dualboot partnered with the client to launch a 3-month AI Center of Excellence (COE) pilot, focused on replatforming a critical 401(k) management application. The goal was to prove a scalable, cost-effective approach that could be repeated across the broader application portfolio.
What the engagement delivered:
- AI-powered codebase analysis 3PO scanned and mapped the the managment app codebase, surfacing workflows, dependencies, and architectural patterns without requiring heavy internal support
- Structured documentation from legacy code Extracted embedded business logic and generated an actionable foundation for engineering, replacing manual discovery
- Accelerated development with reusable architecture A lean team of ~2.5 FTEs applied AI-driven insights and reusable code structures to boost velocity and reduce manual lift
- Independent execution Dualboot operated autonomously from internal developers, enabling fast progress while freeing internal resources for other priorities
- Continuous stakeholder alignment Progress was shared regularly with both technical teams and executive sponsors, keeping confidence high throughout
The Impact
Dualboot’s AI-first approach didn’t just accelerate modernization, it reshaped what the client believed was possible.
- 75% reduction in replatforming time and cost compared to traditional methods, validated on a production-critical application in under 3 months
- 30% lower operating costs through containerization, improving the long-term profitability of the PACE application
- Scalable modernization model proven established a repeatable framework to modernize 20+ legacy applications and unblock the broader cloud strategy
