Redesigning the future from the Mainframe in Financial Services

This report presents a non-exhaustive guide to modernizing mainframe environments, in which five of the most critical aspects to consider when undertaking such initiatives are identified. The goal is to facilitate the transition to open systems without compromising the reliability and resilience that characterize mainframe systems.

The central purpose of the report is to serve as a practical reference for identifying and analyzing the factors that most influence the success of a mainframe modernization project. To this end, it offers an overview of the critical points that impact both the execution of the project and the quality of the final result. A distinguishing key feature of the document is the incorporation of the role of agent-based AI throughout the entire modernization process, highlighting its contribution from the initial phases of analysis and understanding to testing and code conversion.

Based on the analysis conducted, the report structures the work in five key areas:

• Functional understanding of the system to reduce uncertainty.
• The design of a modern and scalable target architecture.
• The transformation of the code and its adaptation to new paradigms.
• Ensuring functional equivalence through testing and validation strategies.
• Managing the coexistence of the legacy environment and the new system during the transition.

In doing so, the document provides guidance on where to focus efforts to reduce risks, accelerate the transformation and guarantee a sustainable evolution of the technological core.