that change is purely for the command line war exporter (for example to generate a war on a build server)
i think the old way still works, but the new way is better when using escaping (for example if the company name has spaces)
you can automate the export on a build server just fine if you set this up. So that you generate a WAR per customer that has for example a special JOB in a jenkins setup (Something Servoy Cloud can do for you)
Are you using on premise installs? Is this not something you can have a look if you can change this to be more in the cloud (then still you can have multiply releases for customers)
NGClient means WAR export, you can still use a .servoy export/import with that as long as the base (ngclient + services + webcomponents) dont change.
There is no such thing anymore as a servoy application server, that is always a "tomcat + servoy war"