Enabling a New Era of Enterprise Modernization

Introducing AveriSource Platform™️ 2.1

For many, modernization for means change. A change that delivers a positive or better outcome than the prior state. Within the IT sector, modernization aligns more specifically to the transformation of enterprise systems, applications, infrastructure, or processes. In some cases, all the above.

However, within IT, change is ever constant. We are always modernizing, enhancing, or improving to meet new business requirements and opportunities, to solve new customer challenges and in many ways, to challenge ourselves on what is truly possible. Preparing or planning for what is over that next horizon is a core tenet of IT. But in an ever-shifting environment where the pace of change is constantly increasing, is that instant insight a tangible reality?

Recently, I sat down with the Head of Product at AveriSource, Stephanie Walter, and explored this topic, alongside the next release of the AveriSource Platform, shaping the future of application modernization and planning. For those starting or optimizing their current modernization journey, Stephanie shares a valuable perspective for your future planning.

Q&A

Ed Airey, VP of Marketing: Welcome, Stephanie. As the world of IT continues to change rapidly, what is your view on the modernization market today? What's new?

Stephanie Walter, Head of Product: When I look at the market today, I see significant change from a few years ago.  Modernization, especially for legacy applications running on the mainframe or midrange systems, has become very popular.  We see new entrants in the marketplace—brands you didn’t see just a year or two ago. The mainframe modernization market is getting a lot of attention and I anticipate we’ll see even more competition as this space continues to heat up. AI is changing everything and that’s clearly the ‘new technology’ from just a year ago.

Ed: How is AveriSource responding to these market conditions?

Stephanie: Nearly every organization is investing in GenAI to enhance their customer offerings and create competitive advantage. AveriSource is making investments in this space also, both to leverage the power of GenAI and to accelerate the modernization process for our customers and partners. But our integration and use of AI techniques is not new. We’ve been incorporating patterns, rule engines, automation, and a legacy knowledge base—now referred to as a model—for years. These are the core capabilities of our platform. Now, we’re leveraging GenAI to support new use cases and create new user-driven automation for our partners and customers, accelerating numerous modernization use cases.

Ed: What have been your priorities from a product perspective and how are you addressing these new opportunities?

Stephanie: My priorities from a product management perspective cover many different areas. We’re moving quickly to incorporate new capabilities for GenAI in our technology, beyond what we offer our customers today. That’s very exciting and we’ll be sharing more very soon. We’re also taking big strides to improve the performance and scalability of the AveriSource Platform, especially in handling large codebases and complex applications. Autotyping of source files and other code ingestion improvements will be available soon to accelerate and streamline the application inventory collection process. We’re also exploring new channels to make even more of our AveriSource Platform available on cloud marketplaces. Today, we provide our AveriSource Scan offering on the AWS Marketplace.

Ed: You are getting ready to launch a new release. Can you share a bit more about that product? What's new?

Stephanie: Yes, of course. Just a few weeks ago, we announced the release of our AveriSource Platform 2.1. This latest release builds on the new capabilities added in 2.0 and now makes available the following new capabilities:

• New: AveriSource Platform 2.1 now offers Active Directory integration as a new option for both private and public sector entities wanting to leverage their preferred authentication method, enabling enterprise grade security. This new capability provides seamless and standards-based authentication so that users can confidently and securely access all AveriSource Platform capabilities through Windows Authentication.
• New: AveriSource Platform 2.1 now offers both IPv6 and IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack support, enabling our users to embrace the future of networking with expanded address space and enhanced connectivity.  
• New: This latest release of the AveriSource Platform also includes various incremental improvements to the platform dashboard and user interface as well as ongoing enhancements to our language parsing capabilities.

Ed: Could you give me a quick recap of the AveriSource Platform and its capabilities?

Stephanie: The AveriSource Platform offers an end-to-end modernization journey for those with legacy application investments. This solution helps organizations analyze large and complex application portfolios, extract business rules, reduce technical debt and accelerate the re-engineering and re-write process to your platform of choice—on mainframe, on cloud, or both. The AveriSource Platform offers five modular and flexible product offerings:

• AveriSource Scan: Quickly evaluate risk, complexity, size, and scope of your legacy codebase. Scan your legacy codebase built on COBOL, JCL, PL/I and Assembler and gain immediate visibility to the risk and complexity within those applications to better inform your modernization planning.
• AveriSource Inventory: Gain a comprehensive understanding of your legacy applications, including the componentry and artifacts that comprise your application portfolio. Explore missing files, unreferenced files, and party software components within your legacy application environment.
• ‍AveriSource Discover: Map your legacy application architecture, explore dependencies, connections, relationships, data sources, data lineage and much more to support your modernization planning.
• ‍AveriSource Analyze: Deeply analyze and extract core business rules within your legacy applications. Isolate and remove technical debt, including unused code, unreferenced code, or duplicate code within your applications. Build business rule requirements documentation targeting an Accelerated Rewrite™️.
• ‍AveriSource Transform: Leverage AI modeling to accelerate the transformation of legacy code to modern Java or C# or a microservices architecture. Deploy generated code to any platform, free from proprietary runtimes, library files, platform, or vendor lock-in.  

Ed: How are customers utilizing these capabilities and where do they see the most value?

Stephanie: Customers see value across each stage of their modernization journey using the AveriSource Platform. For many, documenting their legacy applications and accelerating the onboarding process for new staff is a key modernization use case. Identifying and extracting business rules and building business rule requirements documentation is also highly important. Others wish to modernize in place—on the mainframe or midrange—electing to optimize their legacy code and remove any technical debt. And for our customers that want to move to a modern language, the AveriSource Platform, using AI modeling, can accelerate this process faster than a manual rewrite.  

Ed: That is exciting. What is next on the product roadmap for AveriSource?

Stephanie: As I mentioned above, we’re looking at many different modernization options for our customers and partners, including GenAI, advanced automation, and expanded go-to-market channels. Security and accessibility are also large focus areas for us over the coming months.

Ed: For those who wish to learn more about the AveriSource Platform and this new release, what do you recommend?

Stephanie: I would suggest they visit our website to learn more about the AveriSource Platform offering. In addition, we’ve recently launched a new set of Product Overview videos that introduces each AveriSource product. You can find these videos on the AveriSource YouTube channel.

Ed: Any final recommendations for those starting or course correcting their modernization journey?

Stephanie: Our mission at AveriSource is to meet our customers where they are on their modernization journey. Some are just getting started, whereas others have been on that journey for some time. Our technology, the AveriSource Platform, offers a flexible approach to legacy application modernization, enabling you to start where it makes sense for you and your strategy. For those that are unsure or need to discuss their unique situation, we’d love to set up a short meeting and explore those details further. Please reach out to us for that free and customized consultation.

Ed: Thank you for your time today, Stephanie. We look forward to future discussions and insights into the AveriSource product strategy and roadmap.  

For those who wish to learn more about the AveriSource Platform and this latest release of version 2.1, please visit our product release notes and product documentation for full details.

We’d also recommend you explore the AveriSource Resource Center for more educational reading on the topic of application modernization, including the latest product review and brief by renowned industry experts, The Futurum Group.