This document provides an overview of Mainframe Assessment Tool and the mainframe migration journey.
Mainframe Assessment Tool is an application that lets you accelerate your journey end-to-end from your current mainframe setup to resources on Google Cloud. It lets you assess your codebase without making changes to your existing applications or workloads. With features like asset discovery of your current codebase and documentation generation using generative AI, Mainframe Assessment Tool provides you with everything you need for migrating your mainframe applications to Google Cloud.
Mainframe migration journey
The following diagram illustrates the overall migration journey of mainframe applications:
The migration journey has the following phases:
- Discover and assess the existing codebase: Mainframe Assessment Tool lets you perform the initial assessment of the mainframe application footprint, technology stack and dependencies. After uploading a zip file containing one or more applications, the contents are automatically scanned. By automating the assessment process with Mainframe Assessment Tool, it saves your organization time and energy that would otherwise be spent collecting and processing this data manually.
- Plan the migration: you can use the detailed assessment that you performed using Mainframe Assessment Tool to further plan your migration more conveniently and quickly, while lowering the migration risks.
- Migrate workloads: depending on the choice you made during the planning phase, you can use solutions that Google Cloud provides to start the actual migration.
Code modernization with Mainframe Code Rewrite
After you complete your assessment, you can start modernizing your code with Mainframe Code Rewrite, using generative AI and Gemini models.
Mainframe Code Rewrite (Preview) is a Visual Studio Code extension that supports both Windows and Linux operating systems. It surfaces mainframe-specific generative AI code analysis capabilities—such as specification, code, and test generation—within an IDE environment that's natural for developers to use. With Mainframe Code Rewrite, you can accelerate the timelines and reduce the cost of rewriting legacy mainframe applications to modern cloud applications in Java, C#, and Python.
To try Mainframe Code Rewrite in preview, contact mainframe@google.com.
Key benefits
- Reimagine and modernize mainframe applications for the cloud: create fully modernized applications to replace legacy mainframe applications, substantially enhancing agility, scalability, and security, while reducing maintenance costs and complexity.
- Generative AI assisted code generation and specifications creation: use Gemini Code Assist, generative AI, and mainframe-specific context to analyze and reimagine legacy mainframe code into modern languages, such as Java, C#, and Python.
- Rewrite mainframe applications faster and at a lower cost: accelerate modernization timelines and boost developer productivity by generating application specifications, code, and test cases from legacy mainframe code.
- Seamless IDE integration: access powerful generative AI capabilities and customized Gemini models for modernizing mainframe applications inside an IDE.
Data collection security and privacy notice
Mainframe Assessment Tool only collects information extracted from the zip file that you provide. It doesn't collect personally identifiable information (PII) or data subject to PCI or HIPAA compliance requirements.
All the collected data is used only to assess and analyze your applications for the purposes of cloud migration assessment and planning. Your data is never exported outside the VM on which it gets deployed. The source code is uploaded to Vertex AI, but the model is not enriched by information extracted from this source code.
What's next
- Learn how to prepare for discovery and assessment.