The Challenge
What Matrix Was Facing
Matrix was running a 15-year-old on-premise ERP system with deeply embedded business logic, dozens of downstream integrations from partner and customer systems, and no documentation of its internal data model. A full replacement was not feasible — the system was too tightly coupled to stop. But the vendor had ended support, security vulnerabilities were accumulating, and the system could not support the API-driven integrations that new business relationships required. A solution was needed that modernised the architecture without a big-bang cutover.
The Solution
What We Built
We applied a strangler-fig migration pattern — incrementally extracting functionality from the legacy ERP into a new modular integration layer while keeping the legacy system live. We began by mapping all 23 downstream integrations and building an API gateway that presented a modern REST interface to external systems while routing writes to the legacy database. This broke the direct coupling between external systems and legacy internals. Over 14 months, core modules were extracted one at a time — inventory, procurement, order management, and financial reporting — each extraction validated in parallel run before the legacy version was retired.
Results