Public Sector Legacy Application Modernisation
The Challenge
A Malta government entity was running a critical permit and licensing system on Visual Basic 6 and .NET Framework 2.0, hosted on Windows Server 2008. The application processed thousands of permit applications annually but posed severe security risks due to the end-of-life infrastructure, offered no API capability for integration with other government digital services, and had become nearly impossible to maintain — the pool of developers with VB6 expertise had effectively disappeared.
Our Approach
redskios designed a phased modernisation strategy using the strangler fig pattern, enabling incremental module replacement while the legacy system continued to serve production traffic. Each module was migrated independently, validated with the operational team, and switched over with zero-downtime cutover procedures. This approach eliminated the risk of a big-bang migration for a system that could not tolerate outage.
The Solution
We delivered a phased migration to .NET 8 on Azure, replacing the legacy VB6/.NET Framework 2.0 application over ten months. The modernised system ran in containerised deployment on Azure App Service with Azure SQL as the database tier. A new REST API layer enabled integration with the national digital services ecosystem, and a modern responsive web UI replaced the desktop client — including a citizen-facing portal for online permit applications and status tracking. Azure DevOps provided CI/CD automation and release governance.
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