Pegasystems Inc.

07/07/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/07/2025 23:49

The new methodology for mainframe modernization: AI-led transformation with Pega and AWS

Dive into mainframe modernization at the AWS PartnerCast webinar

Join Pega and AWS at the AWS PartnerCast webinar on July 15 at 10 AM EST. There they will walk through the details of mainframe modernization with AWS Transform and Pega Blueprint, including demoing the technology in action.

For several years, enterprises have pursued mainframe modernization by retiring legacy applications and moving critical workflows to the cloud. The payoff is tempting: In the U.S. alone, organizations spend over $1 trillion each year on IT maintenance. But reducing IT spend is only part of the benefit - as enterprises prioritize agility, innovation, and automation, legacy technology has emerged as the primary roadblock.

Within that category the mainframe is ubiquitous. Enterprises deployed business applications to the mainframe decades ago, hardcoding business rules and logic in COBOL, and building complexity on top of complexity ever since. Disentangling these monolithic systems is a challenge, especially when continuity is imperative.

But this is the age of AI. Organizations have new tools at their disposal to enable faster execution, smarter decisioning, generative ideation - the autonomous enterprise is more attainable than ever. And that transformative power is revolutionizing how IT leaders can approach mainframe modernization

From COBOL to the cloud

One of the layers of opacity that obscures mainframe applications and prevents modernization comes in the form of outdated coding languages like COBOL. Programmers who can effectively manipulate COBOL are few and far between; plus, applications built long ago under far different circumstances are inherently difficult to parse.

Enter AWS Transform, an AI-powered solution that fundamentally changes the economics of mainframe modernization. This advanced refactoring technology can process millions of lines of legacy code in minutes, automatically converting COBOL applications into modern Java-based systems while preserving critical business logic. The transformation extends beyond simple code conversion - AWS Transform decomposes monolithic COBOL applications into manageable, cloud-native components, converting complex VSAM and DB2 systems into contemporary architectures that leverage AWS's full ecosystem of services.

Organizations that previously faced years-long modernization timelines can now achieve comprehensive code transformation in weeks. AWS Transform addresses the critical skills gap by eliminating the dependency on scarce COBOL expertise, while its AI-driven approach ensures that decades of embedded business logic remain intact throughout the conversion process. This represents a paradigm shift from traditional approaches to true architectural modernization.

Reimagine applications for the autonomous enterprise

Another question that frustrates transformation efforts is this: How do you get a critical (but clunky) workflow application to function optimally for a cloud-native, platform-based architecture? In the past, IT teams have lifted and shifted, wrapped and renewed, rebuilt from scratch, or given up. Pega Blueprint ™ revolutionizes this challenge by allowing organizations to reimagine processes through AI-powered application generation. Taking just a few simple prompts about business objectives, Blueprint leverages generative AI combined with decades of workflow best practices to produce fully deployable cloud applications in minutes rather than months.

But this goes beyond simple prompting capabilities. Blueprint accepts legacy asset uploads, enabling organizations to rapidly rethink mainframe applications through a modern cloud lens. This hybrid approach combines the institutional knowledge embedded in existing systems with cutting-edge design principles, ensuring that critical business processes are not just migrated but genuinely optimized for the autonomous enterprise. The result is a dramatic acceleration of the application design process, reducing development timelines from weeks to hours while maintaining the sophisticated functionality that enterprises require.

The end-to-end mainframe modernization solution

Leveraging Pega Blueprint and AWS Transform together delivers an overall transformation experience that fully upends previous assumptions. Now, business and IT teams can collaborate closely, pulling translated code from AWS Transform into gen AI for summarization, and then sending that through Blueprint to reimagine the existing application - delivering transformation with unprecedented levels of speed, flexibility, accuracy, and power.

This integrated approach also enables enterprises to pursue sophisticated data strategies that maximize both operational efficiency and analytical capabilities. Organizations can leverage AWS or Pega Cloud® for live data processing, ensuring real-time responsiveness for critical business operations while seamlessly integrating with AWS Redshift for complex data querying and analysis. The architecture supports multiple data lake configurations for comprehensive historical record management, creating a unified data ecosystem that spans operational and analytical workloads.

Flexibility offers strategic advantage: Enterprises can optimize their data placement based on specific use cases, regulatory requirements, and performance needs, while maintaining seamless integration across the entire technology stack. Plus, the ability to extract business rules from code, leverage insights with AI for deeper target state applications, and build configurable changes rather than rewriting new code means transformation can happen in weeks, not years.

Pegasystems Inc. published this content on July 07, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on July 08, 2025 at 05:49 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io