US software house Relativity Technologies Inc will supply its RescueWare legacy transformation to the privately-held Lanit group from Russia, for deployment at a Year 2000 competency center it will install in St. Petersburg. Cary, North Carolina-based Relativity transforms legacy applications to the current computing paradigm, including web enablement, explained David Green, the company’s vice president for Europe. Y2K compliancy work is a simpler issue than legacy modernization, said Green, so it was no major headache for the company to build that facility into RescueWare, with advice on specific features from Relativity’s US collaborator in this area, the consultancy firm Ernst & Young. Green said Relativity’s revenues from the contract are hard to calculate, as they will be paid by Lanit’s end customers. Rather we’re seeing this as an important step in business development, he went on. He said that beyond the Y2K issue itself, the company sees major opportunities for legacy modernization work in Russia. One of the specific tasks to be addressed by RescueWare in the country, within the context of the Y2K remediation work, will be the transformation of applications in archaic computing languages which have long since fallen into disuse in the West, he explained.
