The Challenge
Choice Hotels, one of the largest hotel chains in the world with over 7,000 properties, runs a modern, cloud-based architecture supported by more than 500 engineers. With hundreds of microservices—each with its own dependencies and versions—it became increasingly difficult to keep libraries current, ensure security compliance, and manage vulnerabilities across the board.
Manual remediation was time-consuming and reactive, often pulling developers into unfamiliar codebases and away from business-critical work. Without a scalable “currency strategy,” maintaining consistency and security while reducing technical debt across their portfolio was a growing challenge.
The impact became clear during Log4j remediation, which required an all-hands engineering effort over six weeks. Simpson estimates Moderne could have performed the refactoring work “in an afternoon,” freeing developer time and accelerating testing cycles.
To continue delivering innovation at scale, the team needed a more automated, repeatable way to address security vulnerabilities and apply modernization patterns across their codebases—without slowing down feature delivery or overloading developers.
500+
Codebases upgraded from Java 8 to 21
80%
Code migration automated
1 Hour
Time to create 200 remediation PRs
The Solution
“Our developers now spend less time worrying about legacy code and more time focusing on value-driven work.”
To improve modernization velocity and reduce security remediation overhead, Choice Hotels integrated Moderne into their software delivery pipeline. The platform enables teams to define reusable, automated refactoring recipes that run across repositories—helping accelerate routine upgrades, enforce code quality standards, and apply fixes with precision.
Rather than treating it as a one-time, high-risk initiative, the engineering team used Moderne’s Platform and multi-step refactoring recipes to migrate from Java 8 to Java 21 in one leap. This allowed them to run migrations across hundreds of repositories with consistency and accuracy, dramatically reducing developer time spent researching upgrade paths or resolving version drift.
The team has also been automating other common maintenance tasks, such as Spring Boot upgrades and vulnerability remediation. By using Moderne to handle these changes safely and repeatably, developers are freed from manual patchwork and can focus on delivering new features. What had once been an all-hands-on-deck disruption—like the scramble to patch Log4j vulnerabilities—is now a controlled, predictable process
Moderne has enabled us to adopt secure development practices that scale with our architecture.
Results
With Moderne, the team completed a full, multi-step migration from Java 8 to 21 across their entire application portfolio—over 500 services—in the same amount of time it had previously taken to upgrade just 10% of that footprint by one version step.
The migration also had broader platform benefits:
- Reduced technical debt across teams with no disruption to business delivery.
- Improved developer confidence, thanks to formatting-aware transformations that preserved each team’s unique code style.
- Accelerated adoption of Java 17+ features—opening the door for future performance and security improvements.
The platform’s success has also prompted broader internal adoption. After seeing early results, Simpson shared that Choice Hotels is continuing to expand Moderne usage across teams, increasing recipe coverage and scaling secure development practices across more of their engineering org.
By pairing a strong engineering foundation with scalable, automated code transformation, Choice Hotels is better equipped to stay ahead of technical debt, reduce cyber risk, and modernize confidently—without slowing innovation.
Moderne helps keep our codebases cleaner, safer, and easier to evolve. It's a major unlock for teams that want to spend more time shipping and less time maintianing.
Moderne's platform helped choice hotels:
Streamline vulnerability management
Moderne’s helps developers patch vulnerabilities faster while staying focused and avoiding disruption.
Improve security posture
By keeping dependencies current, teams can proactively strengthen security and protect their systems with confidence.
Reduce technical debt
Developers can tackle aging code and dependencies early, cutting down on tech debt and keeping their services easier to maintain.
Empower innovation
With less time spent on maintenance, developers can focus on creating new features and driving impactful improvements.
Dive Deeper
Choice Hotels leaps to Java 21—modernization at enterprise scale
Dive deeper into how Interactions replaced Veracode with Moderne to automate code remediation, streamline compliance, and improve developer productivity.
Automated code refactoring at enterprise scale
Learn how Moderne accelerates large-scale code changes across repositories—streamlining migrations, enforcing standards, and reducing tech debt with precision.
Experience automated code remediation in action
Go hands-on to see how the platform works and the breadth of code transformation and analysis recipes you’ll have at hand with the community version of Moderne.
