Industry
Banking & Financial Services
Modernizing a 100+ Application Commercial Banking Platform Without Touching the Mainframe Core
applications sustained and modernized on a single commercial banking portal
stabilize, modernize, and sustain program that reversed an unpredictable release cycle
disruption to the mainframe core throughout modernization
The bank’s commercial banking portal served commercial, investment-advisory, merchant, and financial-institution clients across more than 100 applications, but a stack of legacy UI, middleware, and batch technologies had made the platform unstable and slow to change. Altimetrik took a three-phase approach: stabilizing the core application, modernizing the UI and batch layers to best-in-class technologies, and standing up a global delivery model to sustain the platform. The mainframe core was retained throughout, and release predictability, platform stability, and delivery capacity all improved.
The commercial banking portal was unstable and unpredictable, and even the smallest enhancement took an excruciatingly long release cycle. Business logic was scattered across the UI and middleware layers, the test strategy covered functional testing only, and the technology ecosystem itself constrained what the team could ship.
Compounding the technical debt, critical components were held as tribal knowledge among a handful of developers, and the team was understaffed against a growing backlog.
This was a gigantic system at the center of the bank’s commercial relationships, facing both internal and external users. Instability and slow delivery eroded customer confidence and blocked the enhancements the business needed, while the concentration of knowledge in a few people put continuity at risk.
Altimetrik ran a three-phase path to sustenance. First, baseline and stabilize: reverse-engineer the application suite, prioritize the top issues, fix teething defects, and burn down the backlog. Second, modernize: evaluate best-in-class technologies, build a program plan, upskill the team, and modernize the UI and batch layers while retaining the mainframe core. Third, sustain: govern and standardize build, deploy, and version management, document development standards, and publish reusable components.
Delivery capacity was augmented through a global delivery team, with short-duration onsite visits for offshore members to build rapport, and a clean separation of production support from development so feature work was no longer interrupted by firefighting.
▪ Improved platform stability through resolution of critical defects and backlog reduction
▪ Business logic consolidated out of scattered UI and middleware layers
▪ Enhanced release predictability with structured governance and standardized processes
▪ Production support separated from development to protect delivery
▪ Delivery capacity scaled through a global team with clear role separation
▪ Documented standards and reusable components reduced reliance on tribal knowledge
Altimetrik brought engineering discipline to a system most teams would be afraid to touch, stabilizing and modernizing a 100-plus application platform while leaving the mainframe core intact. By pairing a phased sustenance model with a global delivery team and standardized governance, Altimetrik turned an unstable, unpredictable portal into a platform the bank could evolve with confidence.
