Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is using AWS Transform, an agentic AI-based migration and modernisation service, to cut companies' technical debt and accelerate large-scale application modernisation.

Technical debt is being cited as a structural factor that hinders corporate innovation. Forrester said about 20 percent of corporate IT budgets is used to manage technical debt.

The company said AWS Transform is an agentic AI-based service designed to solve these problems by automating the entire process from application analysis to code conversion, testing and deployment. Based on about 20 years of AWS migration and modernisation experience, it supports speed and accuracy even in large-scale environments.

AWS Transform supports full-stack Windows modernisation, including .NET application modernisation, converting SQL Server databases to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, and improving legacy UI frameworks and deployment processes. The company emphasised that customers can achieve conversion speeds up to 5 times faster and cut operating costs by up to 70 percent.

Experian used AWS Transform to modernise 7 legacy .NET applications, cutting developer effort by 40 percent and saving about 300 days of engineering work. IDEMIA completed modernisation 4 times faster than before, improved its security posture through a move to .NET 8, and cut total cost of ownership by 30 percent.

AWS offers AWS Transform Custom to automate repetitive code upgrades and runtime conversions. It supports conversion capabilities that can be applied immediately to common scenarios such as Java, Node.js and Python upgrades.

In mainframe environments, AWS Transform shortens modernisation periods through automated analysis and testing. BMW Group cut testing time by 75 percent and expanded test coverage by 60 percent.

In VMware environments, it supports large-scale migrations by automating application dependency analysis and migration planning. CSL cut the time needed to draw up an initial migration plan for 29 data centres and 1,072 applications by a factor of 10 and saved at least 10.5 weeks of work time.

AWS is working with Accenture, Capgemini and Pegasystems to provide composable transformation that reflects industry-specific requirements. This allows industry-specific knowledge and workflows to be applied to modernisation even in regulated industries such as finance and healthcare.