Heirloom Computing

Semiotics—The Fourth Dimension of Mainframe Modernization

Why mainframe modernization is so hard (and so worth it).

There’s something strange about mainframe modernization projects. On paper, they should work. You have the technical skills. You understand the business processes. Your team is aligned and committed. Yet a lot of these projects fail to deliver the expected value, if they work at all. 

I’ve been in the middle of complex modernization projects for over twenty years, and I’m publishing this series of articles to share some insights that I’ve distilled along the way.

Over a series of articles, I will show how our customers reduce costs, reduce risk, increase speed, solve the skills shortage, and end up with their applications running on a modern stack—the holy grail of mainframe modernization. But let’s start with the key insight. 

Everyone talks about the three dimensions of modernization challenge: technical (migrating code and data), operational (preserving processes), and cultural (managing people). But there’s a fourth dimension that almost no one sees until it’s too late. 

The fourth dimension is semiotic.

Semiotics is the study of meaning—how signs and symbols carry information beyond their literal content. It turns out that forty-year-old mainframe systems are packed with meaning that isn’t in the code.

Think about it this way. Your grandmother’s recipe for apple pie says, “bake at 350 degrees.” But it doesn’t tell you that she always knew her oven ran hot, or that through decades of real-world experience, she could tell by smell & touch when it was done, or what to do when the humidity made the dough sticky. That knowledge lived in her head, not on the recipe card. 

Mainframe systems have the same characteristics. They contain decades of accumulated wisdom about edge cases, regulatory requirements, and operational realities that someone learned the hard way. This wisdom isn’t documented—it’s embedded in the code patterns, error handling approaches, and design decisions. 

When you migrate a system, you can copy the logic. But can you copy the wisdom? 

Modernization today treats code like a foreign language that needs word-for-word translation. COBOL becomes Java. CICS becomes microservices. DB2 becomes PostgreSQL. But this is like translating poetry with Google Translate. You get the words, but you lose the soul. 

The companies that succeed at mainframe modernization—really succeed, not just technically but operationally—figure out how to preserve the institutional theories embedded in their legacy systems. They understand that these systems aren’t just functional specifications. They’re repositories of competitive intelligence. 

A forty-year-old banking system doesn’t just process transactions. It embodies learned responses to every weird edge case that can happen in banking: leap years that fall on bank holidays, customers who try to withdraw money at exactly midnight on New Year’s Eve in 1999, and so on.

The solution isn’t simply better documentation or more comprehensive testing, because you will never think of all the edge cases. It’s understanding that migration is really about translating meaning, not just code. It’s about preserving the institutional theories that made your systems reliable, not just making them run on modern infrastructure. 

Once you see the fourth dimension, everything else makes sense. The projects that succeed aren’t just about moving code—they’re about preserving an essential competitive advantage. Many of the ones that fail are undermined by the accidental loss of decades of accumulated wisdom. 

The question isn’t whether to modernize your mainframe systems; the question is how to do it effectively and in a way that preserves their intelligence.

Leadership Excellence. Cloud Migration Visionary.

Heirloom Computing—recognized as a pioneer for IBM Mainframe Modernization.

“Heirloom is setting new standards in cloud migration, earning Gary the prestigious title of Cloud Migration CEO of the Year 2024.”

Heirloom Computing Named a Leader in the ISG Provider Lens™ Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2025 Quadrant Report Copy

Heirloom® recognized as Leader for Mainframe Application Modernization Software.

Information Services Group (ISG), a well-known technology research and advisory firm renowned for its industry and technology expertise, has named Heirloom Computing a Leader in its Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2025 Quadrant Report.

“Heirloom Computing’s toolset offers rapid transformations with precise results. It has added GenAI capabilities to enhance speed and quality, delivering clean Java code that is easy to improve and maintain.” – Pedro L. Bicudo Maschio, Distinguished Analyst and Executive Advisor, ISG

Companies that receive the Leader award have a comprehensive product and service offering, a strong market presence, and an established competitive position. The product portfolios and competitive strategies of Leaders are strongly positioned to win business in the markets covered by the study. The Leaders also represent innovative strength and competitive stability.

Enterprises with IBM mainframes are increasingly looking to modernize their mainframe ecosystem. Increasing costs, decreasing skills, and a need to make application workloads more agile are driving the modernization wave. Heirloom migrates mainframe workloads using compiler-based refactoring to produce cloud-native applications that run on any platform.

Highlights from the report:

“Heirloom Computing offers a differentiated replatforming and refactoring technology renowned for its rapid processing of large code bases. It generates native Java applications that run on any cloud, enabling clients to retain source code in COBOL/PL1 or Java.”

Heirloom Computing Named as the IBM Mainframe Migration Solution Company of the Year by CIOReview

Heirloom® h/GENAI™ — Transforming Mainframes for a Future-Ready World.

“We put the reins [of IBM Mainframe Modernization] in the hands of our customers.” – Becky Etheridge, Chief Partner Officer

Heirloom Computing Named a Leader in the ISG Provider Lens™ Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2024 Quadrant Report

Heirloom® recognized as Leader for Mainframe Application Modernization Software.

Information Services Group (ISG), a well-known technology research and advisory firm renowned for its industry and technology expertise, has named Heirloom Computing a Leader in its Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2024 Quadrant Report.

“Heirloom has rapidly gained market share by offering a fast modernization option to handle large applications. It offers the flexibility to choose between replatforming or refactoring applications, offering clients greater control over their modernization journey.” – Pedro L. Bicudo Maschio, Distinguished Analyst and Executive Advisor, ISG

Companies that receive the Leader award have a comprehensive product and service offering, a strong market presence, and an established competitive position. The product portfolios and competitive strategies of Leaders are strongly positioned to win business in the markets covered by the study. The Leaders also represent innovative strength and competitive stability.

Enterprises with IBM mainframes are increasingly looking to modernize their mainframe ecosystem. Increasing costs, decreasing skills, and a need to make application workloads more agile are driving the modernization wave. Heirloom migrates mainframe workloads using compiler-based refactoring to produce cloud-native applications that run on any platform.

Highlights from the report:

“Heirloom Computing offers a differentiated replatforming and refactoring technology renowned for its rapid processing of large code bases. It generates native Java applications that run on any cloud, enabling clients to retain source code in COBOL/PL1 or Java.”

Heirloom Computing Named a Leader in the ISG Provider Lens™ Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2023 Quadrant Report

Heirloom® recognized as Leader for Mainframe Application Modernization Software.

Information Services Group (ISG), a well-known technology research and advisory firm renowned for its industry and technology expertise, has named Heirloom Computing a Leader in its Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2023 Quadrant Report.

“It is a pleasure to watch Heirloom’s outstanding growth and success in mainframe application modernization. The company has acquired a high reputation among leading system integrators, enabling it to work with large organizations and resolve complex modernization challenges.” – Pedro L. Bicudo Maschio, Distinguished Analyst and Executive Advisor, ISG

Companies that receive the Leader award have a comprehensive product and service offering, a strong market presence, and an established competitive position. The product portfolios and competitive strategies of Leaders are strongly positioned to win business in the markets covered by the study. The Leaders also represent innovative strength and competitive stability.

Enterprises with IBM mainframes are increasingly making the decision to exit the data-center business and modernize their infrastructure to the cloud in order to increase agility and dramatically cut costs. Heirloom migrates mainframe workloads using compiler-based refactoring to produce cloud-native applications that run on any cloud.

Highlights from the report:

“Heirloom is highly focused on performance, using compiling technology that transpiles legacy applications to Java. The company’s partnerships with hyperscalers and system integrators have enabled it to achieve better brand recognition and increased sales. It can handle large-scale applications.”

Heirloom Computing Named a Leader in the ISG Provider Lens™ Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2022 Quadrant Report

Heirloom® recognized as Leader for Mainframe Application Modernization Software.

Information Services Group (ISG), a well-known technology research and advisory firm renowned for its industry and technology expertise, has named Heirloom Computing a Leader in its Mainframe Services & Solutions U.S. 2022 Quadrant Report.

“Heirloom has been capturing the attention of hyperscalers and systems integrator partners with its pragmatic solution for fast mainframe migrations to the cloud. With many success cases, the company is well positioned to capture a larger market share, globally” – Pedro Luís Bicudo Maschio, Distinguished Analyst and Executive Advisor, ISG

Companies that receive the Leader award have a comprehensive product and service offering, a strong market presence, and an established competitive position. The product portfolios and competitive strategies of Leaders are strongly positioned to win business in the markets covered by the study. The Leaders also represent innovative strength and competitive stability.

Enterprises with IBM mainframes are increasingly making the decision to exit the data-center business and modernize their infrastructure to the cloud in order to increase agility and dramatically cut costs. Heirloom replatforms mainframe workloads using compiler-based refactoring to produce cloud-native applications that run on any cloud.

Highlights from the report:

“Heirloom was named a Rising Star in 2021 and is a Leader in 2022. The company continues to grow and improve its relationship with cloud providers and system integrators. It offers rapid mainframe migrations converting legacy programming languages into Java which can run on any cloud.”

“Heirloom [replatforms and] refactors mainframe workloads to cloud-native applications that can scale horizontally on AWS and other clouds. The company offers a modern refactoring toolset that attracts system integrators and cloud providers’ attention because of its code refactoring speed and scalability.”

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Heirloom Computing Replatforms The Avon Company’s IBM Mainframe Workloads as Cloud-Native Applications on AWS

Using Heirloom®, The Avon Company was able to decommission their IBM Mainframe

Heirloom Computing Showcases its Single-Click Mainframe to Cloud Software Platform

An RPA-infused integration of Heirloom® and Probe™ delivers an industry-first

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — In an industry-first, Heirloom Computing has achieved the remarkable feat of migrating an IBM Mainframe application to the cloud with a single click.

For organizations looking to exit the data center business and migrate to the cloud, their mainframe infrastructure represents a challenging hurdle to clear. Heirloom Computing’s compiler-based replatforming of mainframe workloads, augmented with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), translates to the fastest, lowest-risk project delivery, with an unmatched ROI.

 

This short video of a live session showcases how the orchestration works – it starts with a direct connection to a mainframe end-point to initiate the collection of a COBOL, CICS & VSAM application, all the way through to it executing on the AWS Elastic Beanstalk cloud platform as a Java, Apache Tomcat & RDS application.

The entire process was orchestrated from start to finish using Heirloom Computing’s inventory analysis & collection tool, Probe. As instructed by Probe, the Heirloom software platform did the heavy lifting of automatically refactoring the code for execution on the JVM and migrating the data to Amazon RDS. RPA was used to automate the entire process, migrating the application in just 2 minutes.

Pedro Maschio, Distinguished Analyst, ISG

“Heirloom Computing is a rising star in mainframe modernization software because of the outstanding speed of delivery and performance that its solutions can offer to clients. This level of automation demonstrated here takes it to the next level.”

Graham Cunningham, CTO, Heirloom Computing

“Heirloom already delivers several unique, compelling benefits, and this showcase is a clear statement that we will not stand still. We are continuing to invest heavily in applying RPA for extreme levels of automation, covering all aspects of migrating even the most complex mainframe workloads to any cloud.”

Other Resources

Read the AWS and Cognizant case studies to understand more about how Venerable achieved escape velocity and savings of over $1M per month by replatforming their mainframe workloads to the cloud. “This has been a hugely impressive implementation that has enabled Venerable to adhere to its cloud-first strategy.” – Tim Billow, CIO, Venerable.

Join Heirloom Computing on LinkedIn. Follow @heirloom.cc on Twitter.

About Heirloom Computing

Heirloom Computing is an award-winning enterprise software company that partners with Global Systems Integrators and cloud providers to replatform and refactor mainframe workloads as agile cloud-native applications on any cloud. Our Global 2000 clients select us because we deliver the fastest, lowest-risk transformation journey with a fully transparent process using a software platform that puts you in complete control. For more information about how Heirloom® and Probe™ can increase agility and dramatically cut OpEx, please visit http://52.23.23.73.

Media Contact:
Glenn Boyet
323993@email4pr.com 
(301) 980-0346

SOURCE Heirloom Computing

Using RPA to migrate a Mainframe App to AWS Cloud in two minutes

Blurr is the fastest Autobot on the planet. We toyed (pun intended) with the idea of labeling Heirloom Computing’s use of robotic process automation (RPA) under the Blurr moniker but decided (sensibly, I think) that it would dilute our existing branding. Nonetheless, with a nod to the descendent of a Cybertronic racehorse, we’re excited to present what we believe is a stunning demonstration of how Heirloom® and Probe™ use RPA to orchestrate the entire process of taking a workload directly from an IBM Mainframe and migrating it to AWS, with one-click, in two-minutes.

So let me just spell that out – we’re going to directly connect to a mainframe end-point, and with one-click, in two-minutes we will collect the target application’s inventory, refactor the COBOL/CICS code to Java, migrate the VSAM data to an AWS RDS database, and deploy a working application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Before I go on to outline how we achieved this, please watch the following 4-minute video demonstration – it’s worth it! Everything in this video is in real-time. The actual process itself, from start to finish, takes just 2m5s.

Heirloom’s core technology is compiler-based, which means it can accurately refactor (or transpile, if you prefer) millions of lines of COBOL and PL/1 code in minutes. And just like any other compiler, including the ones that run on the mainframe, you get exactly the results you coded for – no excuses. Heirloom’s Data Migration Toolkit handles the migration of mainframe datasets (such as VSAM, Sequential, DB/2 & IMS) to any JDBC compliant relational database, without needing to make any changes to the original application source code. These tasks, and many others, are scripted using the application-specific metadata extracted during inventory collection & analysis.

Does this orchestration work for every mainframe application? We’re not going to make that claim today. There are already too many other solutions in this arena that over-promise and under-deliver, even on the basic table-stakes requirement of replicating existing function & behavior.

However, our commitment to applying RPA for extreme levels of automation covering all aspects of migrating complex mainframe workloads, does define our roadmap at the highest level.

For our clients, compiler-based transformation augmented with RPA translates to the fastest lowest-risk project delivery, with an accelerated ROI.

To understand why leading companies in financial services, insurance, retail, healthcare, and government agencies, are embracing Heirloom, read how Venerable achieved escape velocity and saved $1M every month when replatforming their mainframe workloads as agile cloud-native Java applications on AWS, or how mainframe applications can scale horizontally with outstanding performance on highly-available cloud infrastructures like AWS Elastic Beanstalk.