Mainframe systems are often rigid and costly to maintain, yet modernization projects pose enormous risks. Banks face mounting complexity, compliance pressures, and constraints—yet modernization efforts often risk high-profile failure.
Mechanical Orchard's Imogen modernization platform rewrites aging banking applications into modern, cloud-ready systems—without breaking what already works. Our incremental but speedy process helps banks move faster, and avoids the long delays and failures of traditional modernization approaches.
We find out what's going on and how the system works, then use the platform to create a replica in modern, cloud-native codebase.
Imogen proves behavioral equivalence using actual data flows, giving confidence that the modern code created is reliable and minimizing disruptions.
As Imogen proves equivalence for each workload, that workload is cutover into production, where it's ready for innovation
Most modernization projects take years, go over budget, and introduce uncertainty. Imogen is an end-to-end mainframe modernization platform that takes a different approach from traditional, labor-intensive approaches. Instead of a combination of transpilation and brute-force integration and regression testing, followed by a single, high-stakes moment to see if everything actually works, banks now have a new option.
Imogen uses data flows to safely and incrementally rebuild critical systems. Instead of focusing only on code translation, it captures how individual workloads actually behave and rewrites that behavior into modern, idiomatic code. By creating a rapid loop of code generation and validation against real data flows as each workload is rewritten, Imogen removes the long, often uncertain phase that slows down current modernization methods.
While the methodology works for any legacy system, our data capture technology is optimized to automate the modernization process for the following mainframe technologies.
Banks regain the flexibility to adapt, launch new products, and improve operations without the often fraught and unpredictable big, "digital transformation" initiatives.
At the London book launch for the latest book from Leda Glyptis, Ph.D., leaders on the front lines of banking transformation share their views.
“Mechanical Orchard’s team made quick work of dissecting our legacy systems, core business processes, and charted a course for our future technology.
Their disciplined approach to solving ‘the hard problems’ in software engineering is unparalleled in the industry, and delivered results from day one.”
We begin by studying the existing system to comprehend how it works. Together with the client, we select an application and zoom in on a single workload to start, usually the one that is hardest, riskiest, or both. This proves we can tackle the entire system. We learn how it behaves, operates, and relates to the rest of the current system, which forms the basis for creating behavioral tests of the workload.
Our AI tooling speeds up this process, from creating detailed dependency diagrams to monitoring how the system handles tasks. It allows us to complete our analysis in a few weeks instead of several months.
“Mechanical Orchard began by analyzing all the data flows through a single, critical system component, then precisely replicated its behavior in a cloud-based test environment with perfect fidelity.
That’s a powerful proof point.”
First, we establish a secure cloud environment connected to the legacy environment through a VPN. We then rewrite the workload in a modern language, guided by automated tests, then place it into the cloud environment, where it’s subjected to performance and functionality equivalence tests using actual data flows.
Once this workload is performing exactly as required, it moves into the production environment: the client can now decommission the legacy counterpart. Now, the newly-modernized workload is working in tandem with the legacy environment—with no disruption to the system overall.
We continue to rewrite the remaining workloads until the entire recreated system is confidently and securely running in the modern environment.
Because we only work with a single component at a time, each one has a proven fallback method. This profoundly limits the risk to your living, breathing system at any given time.
“It's impressive the level of knowledge that you all were able to build around what has always been hailed as almost impossible to understand, even by the people on my team. The command of the subject matter and the methodical approach that you brought to this is quite impressive.”
Moving forward, each subsequent workload deploys faster and faster, based on our tooling and what we’ve learned from prior workloads. Across both legacy and cloud environments, we continuously monitor and test the new behavior against live data running in real-time validating identical performance and function to the original and preventing any unexpected interruptions or surprises.
Once all workloads are deployed, the entire application can be turned off - and you have a fully functional, exact copy of this critical system running in the cloud.
We believe that every company deserves to realize their vision, free of constraints from the past. Our team's approach, technology, and experience can help them move into this evolving version safely, reliably, fearlessly.
