Adobe ColdFusion Development

ColdFusion in the Enterprise: Current State and Future Perspectives

Adobe ColdFusion is far more than a relic of past technology generations. To this day, the platform forms the backbone of numerous business-critical systems in finance, the public sector, and the insurance industry. Government agencies at federal and state levels rely on CFML-based applications that have grown over years and reliably process millions of transactions per day. In banks, ColdFusion applications control internal workflows, reporting systems, and customer interfaces – processes that cannot be replaced overnight without taking on significant risk.

This is precisely where the challenge lies: the number of developers with solid ColdFusion experience is steadily declining. New talent gravitates toward modern frameworks and languages, universities do not teach CFML, and specialized CF developers are increasingly difficult to find on the job market. For companies whose core processes run on ColdFusion, this creates a growing risk: knowledge drain through attrition, lack of capacity for security updates, and the increasing difficulty of finding qualified external partners.

Migration Options: From Wrappers to Complete Rebuilds

When the decision is made to modernize ColdFusion applications, there are fundamentally several paths available. An incremental modernization approach involves gradually replacing individual modules: new functionality is developed in a modern target language such as TypeScript, C#, or Java, while existing CFML components remain connected via wrapper APIs. This approach minimizes downtime risk and allows ongoing operations to be maintained at all times. At the other end of the spectrum is a complete rebuild – advisable when the existing codebase has accumulated technical debt that makes further development economically unjustifiable. Between these poles, there are hybrid approaches: the strangler fig pattern, where new services gradually replace the old monolith piece by piece, or encapsulating existing CFML logic behind modern REST interfaces to develop frontend and backend independently of each other.

Our Approach: Stabilize First, Then Modernize

At Groenewold IT Solutions, we follow a clear methodology for handling legacy ColdFusion systems. In the first step, we stabilize the existing application: security vulnerabilities are closed, critical dependencies are updated, and the infrastructure is brought to a resilient state. Only when ongoing operations are secured do we begin incremental modernization. Together with your team, we identify the modules with the highest urgency and greatest business value and systematically transition them to a future-proof architecture. This way, we avoid costly big-bang migrations and instead create a controlled transition that does not jeopardize your day-to-day business. Whether maintenance, optimization, or complete migration – we support you with the ColdFusion expertise that is becoming increasingly hard to find on the market.