Leg­acy Sys­tems Mod­ern­iz­a­tion: Trans­form­ing Beta Sys­tems IAM Applic­a­tion for Enhanced Usab­il­ity and Com­pli­ance (Case Study)

Out­dated IT sys­tems can hinder pro­ductiv­ity and com­pli­ance with new reg­u­la­tions. Beta Sys­tems Soft­ware AG faced this prob­lem with its old desktop-based author­isa­tion man­age­ment applic­a­tion, which was power­ful but com­plex. Work­ing with Codelab trans­formed it into a mod­ern web-based plat­form that retains essen­tial busi­ness func­tions while improv­ing usab­il­ity, secur­ity, and com­pli­ance.

This case study high­lights how the mod­ern­isa­tion pro­ject delivered clear bene­fits, such as faster user onboard­ing, sim­pler work­flows, auto­mated test­ing, and quick­er release cycles. These res­ults can help organ­isa­tions look­ing to improve their IT sys­tems without costly rewrites. IT infra­struc­ture without costly rewrites.

Cli­ent

Beta Sys­tems Soft­ware AG provides flex­ible IT solu­tions for author­iz­a­tion man­age­ment and main­frame sup­port, auto­mates IT-based busi­ness pro­cesses, secures access rights and optim­izes IT infra­struc­ture for com­pan­ies. One of their cli­ent applic­a­tions for admin­is­trat­ors had an out­dated desktop-based UI that required sig­ni­fic­ant busi­ness know­ledge to oper­ate effi­ciently. The lack of a mod­ern UX/UI slowed down work­flows, caused inef­fi­cien­cies and res­ul­ted in a steep learn­ing curve for new users. Addi­tion­ally, increas­ing industry reg­u­la­tions man­dated suab­il­ity and access­ib­il­ity improvements.

Chal­lenge

The client’s leg­acy sys­tem, while func­tion­ally robust, relied on an out­dated Java fat cli­ent UI and was tightly integ­rated with vari­ous extern­al sys­tems, includ­ing older tech­no­lo­gies still widely used in the fin­an­cial sec­tor. To remain com­pet­it­ive, they needed to mod­ern­ize the user exper­i­ence with a web-based inter­face while pre­serving busi­ness logic and main­tain­ing seam­less con­nec­tions to crit­ic­al extern­al systems—without requir­ing a com­plete sys­tem rewrite. The chal­lenge was to con­tin­ue product devel­op­ment by intro­du­cing a mod­ern web inter­face for users while keep­ing the busi­ness logic and extern­al sys­tem integ­ra­tions intact.

Codelab helped us trans­form our out­dated, desktop-only sys­tem into a mod­ern, scal­able web applic­a­tion — without dis­rupt­ing our core busi­ness logic. Their UI/UX mod­ern­iz­a­tion expert­ise, backend integ­ra­tion and test auto­ma­tion sig­ni­fic­antly improved our platform’s usab­il­ity, secur­ity, and effi­ciency. Thanks to Codelab, we now have a future-ready sys­tem that meets both reg­u­lat­ory and busi­ness demands.

Thomas von Kulessa
Chief Archi­tect

What we did?	Res­ults:
▪️ A new web-based fron­tend (Angu­lar, Mater­i­al UI) – repla­cing the fat cli­ent with a mod­ern UI	✔️ A mod­ern, intu­it­ive web-based UI – enabling faster task com­ple­tion and few­er user error
▪️ REST API encap­su­la­tion – integ­rat­ing the leg­acy backend via API for seam­less communication	✔️ Seam­less integ­ra­tion with leg­acy sys­tems – main­tain­ing exist­ing busi­ness logic while future-proof­ing development
▪️ Auto­mated test­ing (Cypress, Play­wright, Git­Lab CI/CD) – improv­ing soft­ware qual­ity and deploy­ment speed	✔️ Auto­mated test­ing & CI/CD pipelines – improv­ing release effi­ciency and soft­ware reliability
▪️ Integ­ra­tion into a lar­ger Iden­tity Man­age­ment (IDM) suite, expand­ing sys­tem functionality	✔️ Sig­ni­fic­antly reduced post-release issues – aver­aging only 1–2 minor bugs per six-month release
▪️ Incre­ment­al frame­work upgrades – ensur­ing long-term sta­bil­ity and secur­ity (Angu­lar 9 → 18, Java 11 → 17)	✔️ Com­pli­ance with mod­ern secur­ity and access­ib­il­ity reg­u­la­tions – ensur­ing con­tin­ued sys­tem viability

Tech­no­lo­gies: Java, Spring Boot, GIT, Angu­lar, Dock­er, Git­lab, Junit, Mockito, Tomcat