DRS Software

The Challenge:

Our client is a major multi-national medical technology company specialising in the development, manufacturing, and distribution of medical equipment, reagents and consumables.

The business relied on a critical C++ MFC application for configuration, pricing and quotation (CPQ) of complex deals valued at over € 9B annually.

The application was clearly showing its age, suffering from the complex maintenance and operational implications that come with maintaining and distributing a 20+ year-old legacy desktop application across all internal sales end users in 20+ countries worldwide.

Faced with the complex prospect of modernising a critical piece of their sales IT infrastructure, the business initiated a phased multi-year in-house rewrite effort to redesign the application as an AngularJS web application, re-implementing all the complex business logic in typescript. Not unexpectedly, this project faced significant challenges, with the complexity of the technical effort resulting in delays and budgetary overshoots.

The Solution:

We proposed a different approach, leveraging our WebAssembly expertise. Using Cheerp, an advanced C++ to JavaScript and WebAssembly compiler, we ported and compiled the original C++ code, with minimal modifications, to WebAssembly. This allows the same codebase to run in the browser, guaranteeing behaviour consistency and saving the vast majority of effort involved in a full rewrite.

Starting with an initial proof of concept, and followed by a series of dedicated fixed-term engagements with clear milestones, we proposed, assessed feasibility and prototyped a Wasm port of the existing C++ application, while retaining the originally planned UI redesign.

The results of initial prototyping were extremely promising, and our client comitted to a full Wasm port of the C++ application plus completion of UI development on the AngularJS Web app.

The application was fully ported and successfully deployed to their internal sales users across 20+ countries worldwide. Following the successful deployment, we continue to be engaged on a retainer basis for further development and support.

Our client is a major multi-national medical technology company specialising in the development, manufacturing, and distribution of medical equipment, reagents and consumables. The business relied on a critical C++ MFC application for configuration, pricing and quotation (CPQ) of complex deals valued at over € 9B annually. The application was clearly showing its age, suffering from the complex maintenance and operational implications that come with maintaining and distributing a 20+ year-old legacy desktop application across all internal sales end users in 20+ countries worldwide.

Our solution

We proposed a unique modernisation approach, leveraging our WebAssembly expertise. Using Cheerp, an advanced C++ to JavaScript and WebAssembly compiler, we ported and compiled the original C++ code, with minimal modifications, to WebAssembly. This allows the same codebase to run in the browser, guaranteeing behaviour consistency and saving the vast majority of effort involved in a full rewrite. The results of initial prototyping were extremely promising, and our client comitted to a full Wasm port of the C++ application plus completion of UI development on the AngularJS Web app. The application was fully ported and successfully deployed to their internal sales users across 20+ countries worldwide. Following the successful deployment, we continue to be engaged on a retainer basis for further development and support.

The outcome

The result? a refreshed, modern and future-proofed web application released to production across the worldwide user base in under 12 months - less than a third of the originally proposed timeline, and at a substantially lower budget.