WorkFlow Fibre — Enterprise Migration (SFR)

Modernising a live B2B workflow platform off legacy PHP and onto current Spring — without downtime.

Before/after architecture diagram: legacy PHP and Spring 1.7 on the left, migrated to an Angular client, stable REST/SOAP API layer, Spring Boot 2.7 services, Kafka event bus and database on the right.

Problem

SFR's WorkFlow Fibre B2B platform was running on aging PHP and an old Spring 1.7 codebase: hard to extend, harder to keep secure, and drifting out of step with the rest of the stack. It also had to stay live for the business throughout any change.

Solution

Led the platform through a staged modernisation — migrating the backend from PHP to Spring Boot and upgrading Spring from 1.7 to 2.7 — while keeping the application in production. REST and SOAP contracts stayed stable so existing integrations kept working, with Kafka carrying messaging between services.

Architecture

  1. Angular client
  2. REST / SOAP API layer
  3. Spring Boot services
  4. Kafka event bus
  5. Database

Tech

  • JEE
  • Spring
  • Spring Boot
  • Angular
  • PHP
  • Kafka
  • REST
  • SOAP

Challenges

  • Migrating a live B2B platform without breaking existing integrations.
  • Preserving legacy PHP and Spring 1.7 behaviour through the cutover while the architecture underneath changed.

Lessons

  • Incremental, well-tested migration beats a big-bang rewrite.
  • Holding REST/SOAP contracts stable lets the backend change underneath consumers safely.

Future work

  • Further decomposition into microservices
  • Broader test-automation coverage