UI Portfolio Rationalization: How to Consolidate 50+ Apps into 1 React Library

Most enterprises are accidental museums of UI technology. In a typical Fortune 500 environment, you will find a 20-year-old PowerBuilder application sitting alongside a Silverlight dashboard, a legacy Java Swing tool, and three different versions of React internal apps. This fragmentation isn't just an eyesore; it’s a drain on the balance sheet. With a global technical debt estimated at $3.6 trillion, the cost of maintaining disparate, undocumented interfaces is no longer sustainable.

To move forward, organizations must undergo portfolio rationalization consolidate apps strategies that transform this chaos into a single, governed React component library. However, the traditional approach—manual audits, hand-coded rewrites, and months of discovery—is why 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their timelines.

TL;DR: Portfolio rationalization is the process of auditing, merging, and modernizing fragmented application suites. By using Replay, enterprises can bypass manual documentation (which 67% of legacy systems lack) and use Visual Reverse Engineering to convert video recordings of legacy UIs into a unified React Design System. This shifts the modernization timeline from 18–24 months to just a few weeks, saving 70% in labor costs.

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The High Cost of UI Fragmentation#

According to Replay’s analysis, the average enterprise spends 40 hours per screen just to manually document and recreate a legacy interface in a modern framework. When you are looking at a portfolio of 50+ applications, that translates to tens of thousands of developer hours wasted on "pixel-pushing" rather than feature innovation.

Industry experts recommend that portfolio rationalization consolidate apps should be the first step in any digital transformation. Without a consolidated UI layer, your developers are forced to learn five different styling paradigms just to push a single global branding update.

Video-to-code is the process of using AI-driven visual analysis to record a legacy application's runtime behavior and automatically generate the corresponding React components, CSS, and state logic.

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The 4-Step Framework for Portfolio Rationalization#

Rationalizing 50+ apps isn't just a technical challenge; it's an architectural one. You cannot simply "rewrite" 50 apps simultaneously. You need a pipeline that extracts value from the old while building the new.

1. The Discovery & Audit Phase#

Most legacy systems are "black boxes." If 67% of your systems lack documentation, you cannot rely on the original requirements. You must observe the systems in the wild.

Industry experts recommend recording real user workflows to identify "common denominators" across the 50 apps. Are there 15 different versions of a data grid? Are there 10 different ways users submit a form? Replay allows you to record these workflows and automatically group similar UI patterns into a centralized Library.

2. Extraction via Visual Reverse Engineering#

Manual extraction is the bottleneck. Instead of having a developer sit with a legacy app and a code editor, Visual Reverse Engineering allows you to "capture" the UI.

Portfolio rationalization consolidate apps becomes significantly easier when you treat the legacy UI as a visual spec. By recording the application, Replay’s AI Automation Suite identifies component boundaries, extracts styling constants (colors, spacing, typography), and generates clean TypeScript code.

3. Creating the Unified Design System#

Once you have extracted the components from your top 5 apps, you begin to see the "Enterprise DNA." This is where you build your master React library.

4. Continuous Modernization#

Instead of a "Big Bang" migration, you use the newly created library to replace legacy screens incrementally. This reduces the risk of the 18-month average enterprise rewrite timeline, allowing for "quick wins" within days or weeks.

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Comparison: Manual vs. Replay-Accelerated Rationalization#

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Implementation: Building the Consolidated Component Library#

When you portfolio rationalization consolidate apps, your goal is to create "Headless" or highly themeable components that can satisfy the requirements of all 50 legacy apps while maintaining a single source of truth.

Below is an example of how a legacy "Data Table" from an old Insurance app might be rationalized into a modern, functional React component using TypeScript.

Example 1: Rationalizing a Legacy Data Grid#

typescript
// The goal: Create a single, reusable Grid component that 
// replaces 15+ different legacy table implementations.

import React from 'react';
import { useTable, useSortBy, usePagination } from 'react-table';
import { DesignSystemProvider } from '@enterprise/design-system';

interface TableProps {
  columns: any[];
  data: any[];
  onRowClick?: (row: any) => void;
}

export const ConsolidatedDataTable: React.FC<TableProps> = ({ columns, data, onRowClick }) => {
  const {
    getTableProps,
    getTableBodyProps,
    headerGroups,
    page,
    prepareRow,
  } = useTable({ columns, data }, useSortBy, usePagination);

  return (
    <div className="enterprise-table-container">
      <table {...getTableProps()} className="min-w-full divide-y divide-gray-200">
        <thead className="bg-gray-50">
          {headerGroups.map(headerGroup => (
            <tr {...headerGroup.getHeaderGroupProps()}>
              {headerGroup.headers.map(column => (
                <th {...column.getHeaderProps(column.getSortByToggleProps())} className="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase tracking-wider">
                  {column.render('Header')}
                </th>
              ))}
            </tr>
          ))}
        </thead>
        <tbody {...getTableBodyProps()} className="bg-white divide-y divide-gray-200">
          {page.map(row => {
            prepareRow(row);
            return (
              <tr {...row.getRowProps()} onClick={() => onRowClick?.(row.original)} className="hover:bg-blue-50 cursor-pointer">
                {row.cells.map(cell => (
                  <td {...cell.getCellProps()} className="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-sm text-gray-900">
                    {cell.render('Cell')}
                  </td>
                ))}
              </tr>
            );
          })}
        </tbody>
      </table>
    </div>
  );
};

Example 2: The Modernized Layout Wrapper#

To ensure all 50 apps feel like a single ecosystem, you need a standardized shell. This is a key part of Legacy UI Migration Guide.

typescript
// Standardizing the "App Shell" across the rationalized portfolio
import React from 'react';
import { Sidebar, TopNav, Breadcrumbs } from './navigation';

interface AppShellProps {
  children: React.ReactNode;
  userPermissions: string[];
  currentAppId: string;
}

export const EnterpriseAppShell: React.FC<AppShellProps> = ({ children, userPermissions, currentAppId }) => {
  return (
    <div className="flex h-screen bg-slate-100">
      <Sidebar activeApp={currentAppId} permissions={userPermissions} />
      <div className="flex-1 flex flex-col overflow-hidden">
        <TopNav />
        <main className="flex-1 overflow-x-hidden overflow-y-auto bg-white p-6 shadow-inner rounded-tl-3xl">
          <Breadcrumbs />
          <div className="mt-4">
            {children}
          </div>
        </main>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

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The Role of Replay in Portfolio Rationalization#

When dealing with 50+ apps, the biggest hurdle is the "knowledge gap." The original developers are gone, and the source code is often a spaghetti-mess of jQuery or old ASP.NET.

Replay solves this by focusing on the Visual Layer. By recording a user performing a task—such as "Processing a Claim" or "Onboarding a Customer"—Replay’s engine analyzes the DOM mutations, CSS styles, and interaction patterns.

1. •Flows: Replay maps out the user journey. It sees how a user moves from Screen A to Screen B, documenting the application's architecture automatically.
2. •Library: It identifies recurring UI patterns. If Screen 1 and Screen 45 both use a similar modal, Replay flags this for consolidation into a single React component.
3. •Blueprints: It provides a visual editor where architects can refine the generated React code before it ever hits the repository.
4. •AI Automation Suite: It uses LLMs trained specifically on UI patterns to ensure the generated TypeScript is clean, accessible (A11y), and follows your organization’s specific coding standards.

For more on how this works in regulated environments, see our post on Enterprise Modernization Strategies.

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Why 70% of Traditional Rewrites Fail#

The reason portfolio rationalization consolidate apps projects usually stall is "Scope Creep." Organizations try to fix the backend logic, the database schema, and the UI all at once.

According to Replay’s analysis, the most successful enterprises decouple the UI modernization from the backend refactoring. By using Replay to create a modern React "skin" that communicates with legacy APIs (or even scrapes legacy screens via headless browsers), you can deliver a modern user experience in weeks.

Once the UI is rationalized into a single React library, you have the breathing room to modernize the backend microservices one by one. You’ve successfully hidden the complexity from the user.

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Practical Steps to Start Consolidation#

If you are tasked with rationalizing a massive portfolio, follow this checklist:

1. •Inventory Everything: Don't just look at the "important" apps. Look at the small utility tools that employees use daily.
2. •Define Your Design Tokens: Before writing code, define your colors, spacing, and typography. Replay can extract these from your "best" looking legacy app automatically.
3. •Choose a "Pilot" App: Pick one application that is high-visibility but medium-complexity. Use Replay to record its workflows and generate the initial component library.
4. •Establish Governance: Once you have a React library, you must prevent "UI Drift." Every new feature across the 50 apps must use the library components.
5. •Automate the Documentation: Use the generated Blueprints from Replay as your living documentation. Never let your docs fall behind your code again.

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Frequently Asked Questions#

What is portfolio rationalization in UI development?#

Portfolio rationalization is the strategic process of evaluating a suite of software applications to determine which should be kept, replaced, retired, or consolidated. In UI development, this specifically refers to merging disparate front-end technologies into a single, unified framework (like React) and a shared Design System to reduce technical debt and maintenance costs.

How does Replay accelerate the consolidation of 50+ apps?#

Replay uses Visual Reverse Engineering to convert video recordings of legacy applications into documented React code. Instead of manually auditing every screen, architects record workflows, and Replay identifies common components, extracts styles, and generates clean code. This reduces the manual labor from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours, saving an average of 70% in modernization time.

Can we consolidate apps without the original source code?#

Yes. Because Replay focuses on Visual Reverse Engineering, it analyzes the rendered output of the application. As long as the application can be run and recorded, Replay can extract the UI patterns, layout logic, and component structures needed to rebuild the interface in React, even if the original source code is lost or unreadable.

Is Replay secure for highly regulated industries like Healthcare or Finance?#

Absolutely. Replay is built for regulated environments and is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready. We offer On-Premise deployment options for organizations that cannot allow their data to leave their internal network, ensuring that sensitive legacy workflows remain secure during the modernization process.

How do we handle complex business logic during UI consolidation?#

Industry experts recommend a "UI-First" approach to rationalization. By using Replay to consolidate the interface into a modern React library, you create a unified user experience. The complex business logic can remain in the legacy backend, accessed via APIs or a "strangler pattern," allowing you to modernize the logic incrementally without disrupting the user.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay