Suppose you’re buying a new computer. You find a great-looking computer at a local store, bring it home, boot it up, and…it’s extremely slow. You open up the case only to discover that all of the internal parts are at least 10 years old. You storm back to the store demanding your money back because they sold you an old computer. Their response: “Of course it’s new, look at the new, beautiful case we put it in.”

Of course, that’s a ridiculous story. No self-respecting computer store would sell you a “new” computer that’s actually old on the inside. Why then, do some companies try to sell “modernization services” which do little more than put a flashy new case on old parts?

Who would try to sell a service like that? It’s called “screen-scraping”, and it’s sold by many companies as a modernization option. In reality, it’s not modernization at all–rather, it puts a pretty exterior over the top of your old applications. Sure, they look nice and new, but their outdated foundation drastically limits your capabilities.

There’s much more to the story–too much to put in a blog post. If you want to learn how screen-scraping differs from modernization, here’s a free whitepaper entitled, “What screen-scraping vendors don’t want you to know.” It explains the drawbacks to screen-scraping that the vendor won’t tell you when you buy.