BUG-983: remove the use of xtend Conversions

This removes the last remnant of xtend for this codebase. As it turns
out, it make the code much more efficient, too.

Change-Id: Ie6f67ae308075c9af79a2a849309002d501dc646
Signed-off-by: Robert Varga <rovarga@cisco.com>
(cherry picked from commit d801f884410471aed5468dcffbd359127ef2dddb)
Signed-off-by: Robert Varga <rovarga@cisco.com>
Merge "BUG-983: remove the use of xtend Conversions" into stable/hydrogen