Experience Talks BH: AI applied in modernizing mission-critical systems
On April 9th, Belo Horizonte hosted another edition of Experience Talks, an exclusive petit comité event by Squadra. We gathered over 40 leaders from major companies to discuss one of the most challenging topics in the current technological landscape: the modernization of legacy systems, which are often critical to business operations.
With a special participation from Liliane Braga, Delivery Manager at MRS Logística, the meeting provided an immersion into a major case study we developed in partnership, demonstrating in practice how artificial intelligence is transforming legacy systems into true innovation assets, ensuring business continuity and competitiveness.
The Challenge of Legacy for Innovation
The event began with a necessary reflection on the current state of technology in large corporations. Haroldo Santos, Delivery Director at Squadra, presented impactful data that underscore the urgency of the topic. According to sources such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, McKinsey, and Deloitte:
70% of Fortune 500 companies still have legacy systems
80% of IT budgets are allocated to maintaining these systems
65% of company data resides in legacy systems
90% of these systems are a barrier to innovation
Among the leaders present, there was a consensus: legacy is not just old code; it's a barrier that limits scalability, increases operational risk, drains team innovation capacity, and fails to keep pace with business speed.
Genius: Squadra's AI Platform that Guides and Accelerates the Digital Transformation Journey
With over 38 years of history, Squadra is redefining its clients' digital transformation cycle through Genius.
Genius is a Full Cycle AI platform designed to guide and accelerate our process from the discovery to the growth of digital solutions. Being multidisciplinary, Genius enables various digital transformation initiatives, one of which is legacy modernization.
The application of AI through Genius enhances Squadra's expertise, as it works alongside our specialists, like a co-pilot that accelerates deliveries and facilitates decisions at every stage:
Discovery: performs true "digital archaeology" to extract business rules from complex and undocumented code;
Design: converts outdated technologies into modern architectures and builds a prioritization pipeline based on module dependencies;
Build: performs assisted migration of legacy code to new code;
QA: ensures the new system executes the same critical rules as the old one through automated equivalence testing;
Deploy: the new code is deployed to production and monitored.
MRS Case: Modernizing Mission-Critical Systems
The highlight of the evening was the presentation of the MRS Logística case study, led by Liliane Braga, Delivery Manager at MRS.
The challenge was to modernize a mission-critical system for optimizing railway operations, comprising over 300,000 lines of legacy code, without documentation, and with knowledge lost after more than a decade of its development. The aggravating factor? Only 90 days to deliver.
In Liliane's own words, "without Genius, it would have been impossible." In this complex scenario, the application of AI through Genius truly made the difference.
First and foremost, the main premise was that no new functionality would be added in this first phase; only code modernization would be delivered through this step-by-step process:
Mapping and Rewriting: the specialized intelligent agent, Jack, mapped the entire code, identified business rules, domains, modules, and dependencies of the legacy system;
Operational Security: based on this, the migration was carried out in stages, starting from modules with fewer dependencies to the end of the code, ensuring operations never stopped;
Risk Monitoring: in a critical scenario like MRS', any error could lead to an accident, and despite the tension, no incidents were identified after the code migration, and no bugs were reported;
Result: in partnership with MRS, we created a technological foundation ready for innovation, prepared to integrate new technologies and incorporate new functionalities, with improved performance and user experience.
"AI has allowed us to perform modernization much more safely, quickly, and economically. Genius understands the legacy system and projects a new future from it." — Haroldo Santos, Delivery Director at Squadra
"A system developed with current technology, designed to evolve, connect, and communicate with other systems, opening space for more integration, accessible data, more efficient processes, and increasingly intelligent operations." — Fernando Germano, railway operations specialist at MRS
After the talk, the discussion extended to a networking dinner, where leaders could exchange experiences about their own digital transformation challenges. The event reaffirmed that modernizing is not about changing technology; it's about ensuring the business is ready to scale efficiently and securely, prepared for the future.
The Experience Talks in BH demonstrated that, with the right partnership, a company's past can, and should, be the foundation for a bright future accelerated by AI. The next event will be in São Paulo. See you there!
Want to transform your legacy into a foundation for the future? Discover Genius and talk to one of our specialists.
