AppFactor Pitches at Startup Battlefield | TechCrunch Disrupt 2023

Next one up coming to you from Romania And England we have app Factor Presenting for app factors Gabriel Chuluka and Keith Nielsen give a round Of applause and bring them on out [Applause] Modernization is just the beginning when You see your entire I.T landscape laid Out like a sci-fi movie Thank you Today the typical Enterprise is Wrestling with a multitude of Applications in dire need of Modernization They're getting quotes from system Integrators and partners to help but the Cost of tremendously High and the Timelines are extremely long Applications are often overlooked The greatest problem is that there's Never just one application the portfolio Often contains multiple applications Dozens hundreds we've even seen Thousands of applications and for that Reason it poses a real challenge in Terms of the scalability and the rev the Um the costs to actually maintain these Systems Now across these portfolios we have four Pillars that support our applications we Have infrastructure architecture code And dependencies Over time these pillars start to crumble As technical debt starts to accumulate

This leaves systems become susceptible To Performance degradation scalability Issues becomes a maintainability Nightmare and this truly is a ticking Time bomb The reason is that you know the new Exponential speed of technology is Coming to us as emerging Technologies it Makes it impossible to keep up and to Apply these to our existing systems What's more is that technical debt Actually compounds over time it becomes More complex the longer we leave it more Costly to not just maintain but actually To cut and deal with Gartner research suggests that 40 of Budget across all sectors is actually Spent just maintaining that Legacy that Does not include cutting and moving Forward with our application portfolios So this really is a never-ending Pitfall Problem The size of this problem is also immense 250 billion dollars per year is spent Maintaining Legacy systems and that's Projected to reach 515 billion by 2027. So how do we help Enterprises get ahead Of this Legacy continuum Well app factor is a continuous Modernization platform it's a Productized solution to help identify Cut and maintain technical debt and this Solution is really allow allowing Customers to automate and simplify and

Create a repeatable predictable process In how they transform existing software And Technical debt Our team has worked for many years with Amazon Microsoft and Google we've Witnessed firsthand through hundreds of Migration and modernization initiatives And we've witnessed the tremendous pain And challenge that enterprises across Every sector actually face in tackling Technical debt our customers today are Realizing significant modernization Velocity that's what's needed to get Through the sheer scale of this Challenge Through this we're actually freeing up That 40 percent that's wasted Maintaining Legacy that's simply eroded Over time through technical debt and Through that as you can see we're also Providing a solution that significantly Cuts that technical debt and makes it Easier moving forward this really is not Just a project it's a routine So let's show you how we do that let's Move to demo So our product is designed to really Accelerate the process and simplify the Entire end-to-end Journey from Discovery And identifying technical debt through Cutting it and re-architecting our Applications and deploying it and Maintaining it and making that a Continuous Journey Through the life

Cycle of our applications What we'll show you here is how app Factor has for the sake of time already Performed a scan against an environment It's built a system of record and an Inventory of all of the infrastructure Applications and their dependencies and The relationships between all of those Artifacts throughout the whole Environment And as you can see if we jump down into A server here the platform has already Identified a running application a Candidate application without any manual Process or analysis if we jump into this Right now we can see this application is Actually running on an end-of-life Operating system so this is a serious Threat for the Enterprise not just Commercially without support costs but Actually from a security perspective Right here we have a.net application That's running on a server and we'll Show you how simple app factor is in Terms of automation if we select this Application it produces a wizard for us To start the automation of modernization What we're actually doing here is as you As we work through this um this Particular window The the the product uh what it does is It captures the application dependencies It generates a Docker file which Contains all of the artifacts and

Dependencies of the application It builds that into a containerized Image in this example and it allows you To seamlessly deploy that as a native Application running in in this example Amazon firegate So what it's doing is cutting out all of The manual processes around app Discovery trying to understand and Analyze is this indeed a candidate for Us to modernize and what do we need to Do for that application And it allows us to build Cloud native Representations of these artifacts and Dependencies and as I say generate all Of the deployment specification there is No code there is no yaml configuration There is no configuration of all of the Manual tedious tasks that Architects are Bewildered with and we're able to deploy This natively to the cloud in this Example So as a web application that's now Running natively in firegate without any Change to code or manual consultancy That typically can take months weeks and Even years So let's move back to presentation App Factor as I mentioned before is a Product not a service it's designed for Daily use for Architects and Engineers To empower them to transform Applications as part of their BAU their Standard business day it's built on top

Of machine learning classifications that Help our users identify contextualize And optimize application architecture Linux Windows Server java.net Applications the whole Market is full of Legacy applications riddled with Technical debt and our solution is Really designed to help automate the Process of transforming these existing Applications Our route to Market is one that we see Work very closely with the cloud Providers you got to wrap it up yeah Sure we fit into Um uh programs that they have that allow Us to Um accelerate Cloud Revenue spend for The cloud providers obviously support The outcomes that customers are looking To achieve and therefore Drive the Adoption of that factor through those Motions In terms of differentiation you gotta Leave it there I'm so sorry sure out of Time thank you so much give a round of Applause thanks [Applause] It's so hard that six minute break it's Hard yeah no worries okay Sam let's go To you uh thank you really great job I Have the same problem I I like to talk a Lot and so I go over on presentations as Well but that was really excellent Um curious uh which segment of the

Market are you going after from a Customer acquisition standpoint and how Much traction do you have with acquiring Customers indeed yeah well look the Problem is agnostic right it's actually Sector agnostic truly Um but for us with the size of the Company and how long we've been going It's really about being quite specific And focused in terms of where we get These traction points and with that we Can obviously build out repeatability And scale out now relationships with Microsoft and Amazon clearly help with That Um where we have initial traction is With UK central government Um which is really credible for us we've Got Traction in the US with a financial Organization and a manufacturing Organization and we've started early Conversations with a big Telecom company In Europe Um really what we're focused on is more Around the technical Challenge and Finding repeatability in the Applications and the challenges around These apps that we can find not so much Sector more around the problem and the Challenge that these applications face And with that we can start building out Wider support channels Wait Rebecca Thanks again for for presenting today

Um definitely empathize with the scale Of this problem how do you think about The value prop as more Upstream in the Discovery and diagnostic of technical Debt versus the actual resolution right Of technical debt and where are Customers today getting value indeed I Mean look this is the the reason why we Initially built out the discovery side Because one of the the very first Challenge that engineers and Architects Have is what am I looking at right like Applications that could be quite old There's no documentation Um there's a challenge trying to unravel The sheer complexity of how an Application evolves and changes over Time so Discovery is incredibly enabling But really the value and the opportunity For us with the system that we're Building out and the capabilities of That is really making a difference to Optimize the actual process right this This is where the pain and the time is Wasted and this complexity in that and We believe that we can really accelerate The most challenging part of that Through Automation and machine learning Classifications to really optimize that Process for them and with that everyone Wins Great Danielle Um What are the parameters of the app

Factor solution with respect to types of Application what types of application Can you look at today and go through the Entire end-to-end solution with Yeah so um sx86 architecture so it's Linux and Windows Server workloads so It's incredibly broad Um right now that's kind of where we've Started off so if you think of some Runtimes that we support.net Java Application servers like tomcat and JBoss that's fundamentally where we're Starting out because there's just a Significant market for that and a huge Challenge and you know these are Supported Frameworks that are provided By Amazon Microsoft and Google and this Is what we typically see in the market So that's kind of where we're starting All right I would love to learn more about your Backgrounds and what Drew you to this Problem sure yeah great question um I Would say that initially and then Gabby You can go um yeah so um you know we've We've been in this space for a long time Uh we've worked with a number of Different um areas of tech um Fundamentally we had an experience as a Team before where we really um drove a Successful go to market to an exit to Amazon in this market and that paved the Way for understanding gaps we've worked With the go to market teams Amazon and

Microsoft for the last seven years so we We have a great feel in terms of what The challenges they face as Organizations and their customers and The partners and and so the whole Solution has fundamentally been built on That knowledge Um and that's where our passion lies so I don't know if you want to quickly Cover yep so basically the engineering Team has spent last five years doing Only Discovery focusing only optimizing Discovery for a different product but Now we build Discovery in a different Way total different way because we Identify issues with the first approach So we could start with some something That Kudo discovering in matters of Seconds instead of minutes like before The entire team like I said we worked Together for five years only in this Space but with some of the guys I Already were for more than 10 years Doing in general back-end development And architecture Did Rick do you want the last one uh yes A quick question on the customer Feedback so you have a great user base Already of people who are using the Product is there any area where you want To double down on and some areas where You're like doesn't make sense and how Will your product evolve over time yeah Indeed I think that's a really good

Question Um for us there's three modules of the Planet of the product uh Discovery and Assess modernize as a re-architecting Capability and then deploy and maintain That last module we haven't quite got There yet in ways we can deploy from Provision but really for us that's where The whole intrinsic value of our Proposition makes sense and it becomes Like I say very much a daily tool to Optimize architecturally this isn't just Virtual machine cost optimization we're Talking about leveraging automation to Optimize architecturally and that's Incredibly powerful and so we really Believe that that has so much scope Because reality is legacy is a Continuum It never ends this this really isn't a Project it should be a routine and it Isn't today and we believe a product Solution really empowers us to do that So that's that's the vision that makes Sense thank you that's a powerful way to Stop so thank you so much give them a Round of applause [Applause]