DEVOPSdigest

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced new capabilities for Amazon Q Developer, a generative AI assistant for software development, that take the undifferentiated heavy-lifting out of complex and time-consuming application migration and modernization projects, saving customers and partners time and money.

- Modernize Windows .NET applications to Linux up to four times faster and reduce licensing costs by up to 40%.

- Transform VMware workloads to cloud-native architectures, converting on-premises network configurations into AWS equivalents in hours instead of weeks.

- Accelerate mainframe modernization by streamlining labor-intensive work like code analysis, documentation, planning, and refactoring applications.

- Amdocs, Caylent, Cognizant, Compass UOL, HCLTech, Heirloom, Infosys, Mission Cloud, Signaturit Group, Slalom, SoftServe, Steamhaus, Tata Consultancy Services, and Toyota Motor North America are among customers and partners using Amazon Q Developer to migrate and modernize their legacy workloads faster.

“We are combining Amazon Q Developer with our nearly two decades of experience helping organizations migrate and modernize their legacy workloads on AWS to accelerate and simplify large-scale transformations,” said Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, vice president of Technology, at AWS. “This is a game-changer for customers and partners looking to move off of Windows .NET, VMware, and mainframes. Now, Amazon Q significantly speeds up application transformation projects with agents that can autonomously complete some of the most labor-intensive tasks, such as analyzing, planning, code generation, and testing, saving customers time and money, and helping them realize the full value of the cloud.”

Many organizations have a large number of legacy applications that often require specialized expertise to operate and are expensive and time-consuming to maintain. While they want to move away from these legacy technologies, modernizing them can take months or years of tedious work. As a result, organizations stall or postpone these projects entirely, so they can prioritize building new applications and experiences. To make these kinds of projects easier, Amazon Q Developer provides transformation capabilities that use AI-powered agents to automate the heavy lifting involved in upgrading and modernizing, such as autonomously analyzing source code, generating new code, testing it, and executing the change once approved by the customer. Earlier this year, Amazon integrated the Java transformation capability of Amazon Q Developer into its internal systems to migrate tens of thousands of production applications from older versions of Java to Java 17. This effort saved more than 4,500 years of development work, compared to what it would have taken previously, and realized performance improvements of $260 million in annual cost savings. Now, AWS is extending this technology to support more large-scale legacy transformation projects.

- Modernize Windows .NET applications up to four times faster: Organizations today want to accelerate their modernization from Windows .NET Framework to cross-platform Windows .NET on Linux for reduced licensing costs, enhanced security, optimized performance, and to simplify the adoption of modern development practices. With Amazon Q, customers and partners can modernize .NET applications from Windows to Linux to realize up to a 40% reduction in licensing costs. To start a transformation, a developer simply selects “Transform” under the AWS Toolkit section in their integrated development environment (IDE) and confirms the specific file they want to modernize. Amazon Q then uses agents to automatically identify the components that need to be upgraded, create a transformation plan, fix any build errors, and execute the plan. This includes upgrading existing code and configuration files, generating any new files it needs, and fixing any issues identified with failed builds before presenting a summary to the developer.

- Signaturit Group, a European provider of highly secure, complete digital transactions, is already using Amazon Q to accelerate their modernization projects. While Signaturit knew they wanted to move their Windows .NET applications to improve their speed, efficiency, and costs, it was projected to take them up to eight months to complete the project, and competing priorities kept taking precedent. By using the new capabilities of Amazon Q, Signaturit Group was able to modernize their legacy code and accelerate the migration of their license management application from Windows .NET to Linux in just a few days, without having to deprioritize or delay other projects to make it happen.

- Transform VMware workloads: As customers and partners exit data centers, one of the key workloads they want to modernize quickly is VMware. Amazon Q now simplifies and speeds up the transformation of VMware workloads to AWS, helping them benefit from improved security and resilience even faster. Customers and partners no longer have to spend as much time evaluating which workloads can be safely moved or if they have designed the right infrastructure to meet their security and scaling needs. Amazon Q uses agents to automatically identify dependencies and create a plan to modernize workloads in waves, accomplishing in minutes what could take weeks. Amazon Q agents also convert on-premises networking configurations to AWS networking equivalents in hours instead of weeks, compared to traditional manual approaches.

- Cognizant, a multinational information technology services and consulting company that helps organizations modernize technology, reimagine processes, and transform experiences, is using Amazon Q to help its customers accelerate the VMware modernization process. By leveraging Amazon Q, Cognizant will be able to accelerate the modernization of hundreds of VMware workloads for clients faster, allowing them to focus on their work, helping customers reimagine processes, and transform experiences for end users.

- Accelerate mainframe modernization: One of the most complex systems preventing organizations from moving out of data centers is mainframes. Amazon Q now streamlines the labor-intensive work, such as code analysis, documentation, planning, and refactoring applications, involved in mainframe modernization projects, starting with IBM z/OS mainframes. Now, partners and customers can collaborate using Amazon Q to reduce costs and accelerate their modernization timelines. Amazon Q agents can assist with a range of modernization tasks, like automatically generating documentation for COBOL code and quickly decomposing monolithic applications into components that are ready to be moved to AWS.

To help customers and partners more efficiently collaborate on large-scale transformation projects, all three of these capabilities are available through a new Amazon Q Developer web application. Designed to specifically help customers perform hundreds of complex transformation projects at the same time, the new web experience gives teams a central place to review plans, refine them based on their organization’s specific needs, and track key project milestones throughout the process. The VMware and mainframe modernization capabilities are only available through this new experience, while developers can also perform Windows .NET transformations within their IDE.

All of these new Amazon Q capabilities are available in preview today.