Smalltalk transformations?

I see that Synchrony Systems has a partner in Europe - Tricept. I'm hearing the same "modernize your Smalltalk application by moving to Java" pitch that I heard at Smalltalk Solutions. There's an interesting problem here, but it's not the one you think I'm going to bring up. One of the big pitches here is that you'll need to take your old client/server application and make it into a server based application. Yeah, that'll work.

Back in the old days, ParcPlace had a pitch like this when we released VisualWave (in 1995). We told people that you could just load Wave, and bingo - your old application would be instantly web enabled. It's not that easy. Client/Server applications tend to have a huge number of single user assumptions baked in, and transforming an application to be server capable is not a matter of changing look policies (widgets to HTML widgets), or translating from Smalltalk to Java. It's fundamentally about rewriting your application.

When you hear someone pitch you on the notion of using tools to "modernize" your Smalltalk application (i.e., move it to Java and make it server aware) - you need to understand just how deep the money pit is that they want you to fall into. It's not a surprise that the people pushing this represent service companies that bill by the hour :)