I needed to do some research for one of our larger UK ISVs on VB6 migration options. As part of that I spoke to one of the Execs at Artinsoft and thought it would be useful to share what I found out more broadly. But first some background...

VB6 migration projects are becoming much more common - in part because we are close to the end of extended support (1 year to go http://support.Microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2971) and in part because many companies with VB6 solutions have also now got first hand experience of the power and productivity of VB.NET/C# on other work and want to standardise on a single technology platform across their portfolio.

We have a lot of resources to help (start at our main migration site and the very good downloadable book) and we also have a program and partners to help. One such partner is Artinsoft who work with us through NXT. 

Now, back to what I found out from Artinsoft last night.

  • Size of Projects: They have carried out VB6 to .NET migrations on several projects approaching 1 million lines of code. The largest to date was 1.6 million lines. They are about to start a 3 million lines of code migration.
  • VB.NET or C#: They can migrate to either. The migration to C# is either the same price or slightly more expensive depending upon the structure of the VB6 code. 10% to 25% more is reasonable guide for C#
  • ISVs: They have and are working with many ISVs worldwide. In most cases the ISV elects to have a turnkey solution which is when Artinsoft do the entire migration against agreed test cases.
  • Turnkey or not: They follow a Ready Set Go methodology. Ready is assessment, Set is a pilot of a module of the solution (for a million line solution, the pilot would likely be 100,000 lines), Go is the actual migration. The Go phase can be 100% Artinsoft or ISV team + Artinsoft Experts. Ready, Set, Go is explained at http://www.artinsoft.com/so_rsg.aspx
  • UK or Offshore: They can do the work either in the UK or back at their offices – although the Ready phase would be UK. The UK ISV they most recently did work for elected to have the GO phase carried out by the Artinsoft team, back at Artinsoft.

Which left me feeling very comfortable for the work that needs to happen with this ISV.