Cloud Computing: Gizmox Salvages Client/Server Apps

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Tel Aviv-based Gizmox says it’s figured out how to salvage all those scads of Microsoft client/server desktop apps – pointedly the enterprise ones – transform them – relatively painlessly – into secured-by-design HTML5, and move them to the web, the cloud and mobile devices all without rewriting any code or re-engineering anything.

It’s agnostic about what mobile device. It could be Apple or Android as well as the new Windows 8 stuff.

It calls its tool-base solution Instant CloudMove Transposition Studio, a name that will never fit on a marquee. But Gizmox will still know if it gets applause for the downloadable community technology preview (CTP) it’s just put out…

The CTP is a self-service Visual Studio integrated solution with demo code to show how it works.

The company says any Microsoft Visual Studio developer can transform Visual Basic 6 and .NET enterprise client/server applications into HTML5-based web, cloud and mobile applications, and upgrade their code or UI while they’re at it.

It says there are 30 billion lines of VB code out there, enough to keep anybody busy for a while and it worries about supporting the possible demand. It’s already helping with 20 million lines of code and expects the spend on cloudifying to be the biggest IT spend ever. It figures it can make it cheaper and do it faster – and that includes maintenance.

Gartner reckons it’d cost $6-$26 to rewrite each line of client/server code, estimating a developer could maybe do 170 lines a day.

Gizmox says it can do it for 35 cents-50 cents a line and turn out 5,000-10,000 lines a day. That means 100,000 lines would take, say, 10-20 days and cost $35,000-$50,000, with maintenance running three cents a line.

The transposed application will be magically available on any mobile or tablet device or browser and across any client operating system with a .NET back end. The widgetry works by sending just the metadata back and forth consuming only a tenth the bandwidth and using none of the device’s computing power.

Neat, huh. Especially if it works.

The transposition allows code, flow and UI adjustments on all smartphones and tablets, including native touch and gestures user experience.

The extended application logic and data remain on the server behind the firewall so the application front end is, as they say, secured-by-design.

Gizmox CEO and co-founder Navot Peled figures he’s addressing a market worth trillions of dollars. He says enterprises are lining up for the solution.

Gizmox is toying with the idea of making CloudMove a cloud service by the middle of next year. By then it might have a Java version too. Windows 8 is only going to increase demand but the transition from XP to Windows 7 is still happening, Windows 7 to 8 will conservatively take three to six years.

By the way, Gizmox widgetry has been downloaded more than a billion times – yeah, a billion – and it’s got 40,000 Visual WebGui web applications in production. It claims users at Visa, Exxon Mobil, Avaya, Swiss Telecom, Stanley Tools, Bank of America and defense security organizations.

The five-year-old company has strategic partnerships and does joint R&D with Microsoft and Citrix, which is also invested in Gizmox.

To download the stuff, go to www.visualwebgui.com/download.aspx.