Why shouldn't I just use a Windows emulation layer or toolkit on my Linux system to migrate my application?

Experience has taught us that the best application is one that runs natively on the target operating system. Emulation systems and toolkits add an additional layer of code between your application and the native Linux OS and toolkits. By nature these layers are prone to "decay" as the underlying system evolves. How confident, for example, can you be that the emulation layer will still work if you upgrade your Linux OS or want to take advantage of a newer release of a GUI toolkit?

In terms of commercial emulation solutions these generally impose licensing and runtime fees that could considerably increase the costs of deployment and maintenance of your application.

I've spoken to outsourcing contractors who say they can migrate my Windows application to run natively on Linux. Why is your solution more cost effective?

We have migration technology which we believe to be unique. It allows us to automate large amounts of the migration work enabling us to perform the migration much faster than a team of developers ever could by hand coding. This technology, proven in many previous migration projects, scales to large code bases spread over massive numbers of files. The end result is a migration completed in a fraction of the time normally expected for such a project.

Can we buy this migration technology from you to perform the migration ourselves?

Currently we use the technology internally to provide a complete migration service to customers and do not generally sell the technology for customers to use themselves. In special circumstances where the migration work cannot be outsourced (such as classified and military projects) we do license the technology combined with support services to the customer so that they can perform the migration themselves.

Who are IST and how long have they been in business?

Founded in 1982, IST is a leading provider of software development tools and services. For many years IST has been helping companies migrate their applications from one platform or toolkit to another. In addition to Windows to Linux porting we have helped customers in the past to migrate from UNIX to Java, UNIX to Windows and ObjectBuilder/OI to Motif to name just a few examples. IST are also the developers of the X-Designer cross platform GUI Builder and Visaj - the visual application builder for Java. Our customers include Schlumberger, Fujitsu, SGI and Sun Microsystems.

How do I find out more?

Alternatively email us at migration@ist.co.uk,
or call us in the US at 650 919 0200 or in Europe at +44 845 034 0961.