- Mainframe migration accelerated from 5 years to 17 months.
- AWS Transform achieves 99.996% COBOL to Java conversion accuracy.
- Parallel testing with live production traffic builds unprecedented confidence.
- Enhanced developer experience and 40% improvement in maintainability.
In a groundbreaking move, financial services giant Fiserv, in collaboration with HCLTech and Amazon Web Services (AWS), has dramatically accelerated its mainframe modernization journey. Leveraging AWS Transform's agentic AI capabilities, a complex, mission-critical application migration that typically takes years is now on track for completion in just 17 months, setting a new benchmark for speed and reliability in the financial industry.
Mainframe systems, while incredibly stable, present a unique challenge: a widespread reluctance to touch them due to their mission-critical nature. Sachin, AVP and Global Client Partner from HCLTech, highlighted that these systems run 24/7, processing hundreds of millions of transactions daily, where even the smallest disruption can have significant financial impact. This inherent complexity and low tolerance for downtime make modernization efforts daunting, often leading to multi-year rewrite projects with uncertain outcomes.
Fiserv, a global leader in payments and financial technology, faced this very dilemma with its critical host data capture platform, processing over $10 billion in daily volume. Amir, VP of Merchant Services Technology at Fiserv, initially considered a multi-year rewrite, which proved too slow and uncertain. Their journey evolved through exploring replatforming options, ultimately leading to the adoption of AWS Transform. This solution offered a unique advantage: high-fidelity COBOL to Java conversion with an astonishing 99.996% accuracy, minimizing defects and preserving complex business logic, combined with agentic AI to refactor the code into modern, maintainable Java.
Operationalizing such a critical migration required a robust program and strong partnerships. Amir emphasized that technology alone isn't enough; a great program is key. The collaboration between Fiserv, HCLTech, and AWS was crucial, with AWS providing product expertise for Transform and HCLTech offering at-scale operational execution. Fiserv itself remained deeply involved, ensuring shared ownership and transparency. A pivotal strategy was parallel testing: running the transformed platform alongside the mainframe, processing live production traffic and comparing outputs in real-time. This rigorous approach, handling 150 million daily records, built immense confidence in the new system's reliability and accuracy.
The results have been transformative. The timeline for modernization was compressed from an estimated 3-5 years to a remarkable 17 months. Beyond speed, Fiserv anticipates up to a 40% improvement in maintainability due to the modern tech stack and automation. The developer experience has been revolutionized, moving away from mainframes to modern tools and tapping into a much larger talent pool proficient in Java. As Amir succinctly put it, the question is no longer whether to modernize, but "how fast can you do it?" This successful migration paves the way for future innovations and agility at Fiserv.
“My question is not whether to modernize, it is how fast can you do it.”
