Matthias Zimmermann gave a very exciting talk at EclipseCon Europe 2015 on the modernization of a frontend using Eclipse Scout showcasing one of their customers.
The frontend based on a custom web framework and consisted of a whole lot of JSP pages. The website's maintenance got one of the key pain points as even small changes took ages to deliver. It even got harder as the team members changed. Beside the website itself they also had to maintain the framework which also got a lot of attention.
Usability was also an issue. The software industry was not even aware of term "usability" when they started developing that application. Today's users are very sophisticated regarding usability from their personal experience with devices and applications.
The processes were the main USP of that company and they were mostly represented by that software. It captured the whole process knowledge of the organization which took years to build. Because of this the customer was not willing or able to use an off-the-shelf solution. They needed to stay with the current solution at least for the backend.
Eclipse Scout came to the rescue as it enabled the customer to decouple the frontend from the backend and even the frontend itself from a concrete implementation as it is UI technology independent. A big benefit for business apps where 10 years is common period of time to be used and it is unimaginable which frontend technologies will be used then.