AI-Powered Legacy Modernization Breakthrough Yields £10 Million in Annual Savings

For years, solution architects like Jeff Wile have been stuck in a cycle of uncertainty when trying to modernize legacy applications. They'd spend weeks poring over notebooks filled with fragments of data flow and integration points, only to find that there was always one more person who 'really knew' the system.

Ensono, a leading managed IT service provider, faced this problem constantly with their clients. But then they partnered with IBM Bob, an AI-powered developer partner that plugs directly into a client's codebase and provides verified answers on how the application is architected, where data flows, and what its underlying structure looks like.

According to Ensono, tools like IBM Bob are different from traditional documentation because they help translate understanding of the system into a forward-looking roadmap. This reframes modernization from a reactive exercise into a proactive and strategic one.

The results were striking: Ensono's AI-accelerated assessment analyzed six million lines of legacy code in just four weeks, identifying a modernization path with the potential for more than £10 million in annual savings. The company claims that this is 'a whole other level of depth and information,' particularly around application architecture and data flows.

Ensono tested IBM Bob against one of their most complex engagements: Markerstudy Group's large claims-processing and customer-management platform on a legacy RPG stack. They selected Bob because it delivered the level of architectural insight required, ultimately providing a clear roadmap for where the application needed to go next.