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Amadeus, a global leader in travel technology, faced the formidable challenge of modernizing its Issuance Back End (IBE) system to meet the demands of a fast-paced, cloud-driven world. With its 500,000 lines of C++ code, 90 subsystems, and a critical role in the ticketing process, the IBE system was essential yet deeply complex. To prepare for the transition to a cloud-native, service-oriented architecture (SOA), Amadeus turned to Silverthread and its CodeMRI Suite to gain critical insights into their system’s architectural health.
Using CodeMRI’s Blueprint capability, Amadeus uncovered hidden complexity, identified actionable solutions, and empowered their teams to decompose the system into modular components. This work laid the foundation for a successful cloud transformation, improving scalability, maintainability, and strategic alignment across teams.
The Challenge: A Legacy System in Need of Transformation
The IBE system had evolved over decades, integrating layers of mainframe, client-server, and API-based functionality. While powerful, this legacy system faced significant barriers to modernization:
Interdependence: With 500,000 dependencies across 90 subsystems, tightly coupled components created ripple effects that made even small changes risky.
Hidden Complexity: Out of 500,000 dependencies, 12,000 flowed in unintended directions, creating tangles that undermined modularity.
Planning Uncertainty: Without a clear understanding of the system’s structure, planning a cloud migration was daunting. Could the system be decomposed, or was a complete rewrite necessary?
To migrate the IBE system to the cloud, Amadeus needed precise answers to these questions. Without them, developers, architects, and management alike were flying blind.
The Solution: Leveraging CodeMRI’s Blueprint Capability
Silverthread deployed the CodeMRI Suite, focusing on its Blueprint capability to analyze the architecture of the IBE system and provide actionable insights. This process included:
Mapping Dependencies:
CodeMRI Blueprint analyzed 500,000 dependencies and identified the 12,000 problematic ones, which were concentrated in a few dozen files.
Visualizations showed precisely where unexpected relationships existed, enabling teams to target their efforts effectively.
Visualizing the System:
Design Structure Matrix (DSM) visualizations captured the actual architecture of the IBE system, comparing it to the intended structure.
Developers and architects used large printed posters of these visualizations to align on priorities and discuss solutions collaboratively.
Guiding Cloud Readiness:
The analysis highlighted the exact lines of code responsible for unintended dependencies, giving developers a clear roadmap for untangling the system.
Recommendations focused on using controlled APIs to enforce modular boundaries, ensuring subsystems could operate independently.
Empowering Developers and Managers
A key outcome of the engagement was the ability to bridge the gap between technical teams and management:
Developers:
The Blueprint analysis validated what developers already knew intuitively: the area of the codebase they found most challenging corresponded directly to a tightly coupled core.
With new insights, developers could finally address the root causes of their struggles.
Managers:
Visualizations and data gave managers a clearer understanding of why developers faced challenges in certain areas.
This alignment improved communication and enabled more effective decision-making about resource allocation and timelines.
The Results: A Cloud-Ready System
Armed with CodeMRI’s insights, Amadeus was able to:
Decompose the System:
The IBE system’s 90 subsystems were successfully separated into modular services, each capable of dynamic scaling and cloud deployment.
The exact steps required to address the 12,000 bad dependencies were clearly defined, ensuring an efficient transformation process.
Improve Scalability and Modularity:
Controlled APIs replaced tangled connections, creating clean boundaries between components.
The system became easier to maintain and more resilient to future changes.
Enable Strategic Planning:
For the first time, Amadeus could confidently plan its cloud migration, with a detailed understanding of what needed to be done and why.
Management could weigh the costs and benefits of refactoring versus rewriting, ensuring optimal investment decisions.
Enhance Collaboration:
The process fostered stronger communication between developers, architects, and management, aligning technical and business goals.
A Model for Transformation
The success of this engagement underscores the power of data-driven insights in enabling complex system transformations. By revealing the hidden complexity within the IBE system, Silverthread’s CodeMRI Suite provided Amadeus with the clarity and tools needed to move forward confidently.
This work culminated in a public webinar hosted by the MIT System Design and Management (SDM) program, where Martin Jouvenot and Rasesh Jethi of Amadeus presented the results alongside Silverthread. Their willingness to share these insights exemplifies their commitment to innovation and collaboration.
Conclusion: Transforming Confusion into Clarity
Through its partnership with Silverthread, Amadeus turned a seemingly insurmountable challenge into an opportunity for growth and innovation. With the help of CodeMRI’s Blueprint capability, they gained visibility into their system, built alignment across teams, and successfully decomposed the IBE system into cloud-ready services.
This transformation would not have been possible without the dedication and leadership of the Amadeus team, particularly Martin Jouvenot and Rasesh Jethi. Their openness to collaboration and data-driven decision-making set a high standard for excellence.
Today, Amadeus’s IBE system operates as a scalable, modular platform, ready to meet the demands of a dynamic industry. The lessons from this journey demonstrate the importance of aligning technical health with business strategy—and the power of clarity in achieving transformational change.
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