AI-driven modernization is a powerful strategy that delivers efficient results, optimizes processes, ensures greater efficiency, and accelerates value delivery while reducing costs.

StackSpot AI is a contextualized artificial intelligence tool that directly impacts software modernization. AI offers developers assertive and more complete suggestions, triggering a development cycle of incredible speed, efficiency, and quality. 

In this article, you will discover the benefits of AI-driven modernization for your business!

Efficiency in AI-driven modernization

According to IBM, 79% of executives say using generative AI in application modernization projects will increase business agility. This is because speed is key to profitably delivering functionalities, services, and products. 

In this article, you’ll learn why AI-driven modernization is the turning point that leading companies are betting on for the future of software development.

Contextualized AI tool: the best ally in the modernization process

If generalist AIs can speed up development by up to 45% through automation and freeing up developers’s time, imagine how much a contextualized AI that provides tailored responses can impact your modernization process.

StackSpot AI is precisely that kind of artificial intelligence. The tool is designed to offer consistent answers to developers’ specific needs.

Context allows for the creation of more comprehensive and higher-quality responses, adapted to the needs of your company or team, with the privacy and security that generalist AIs do not provide.

StackSpot AI for legacy modernization

StackSpot AI shows its potential in AI-driven modernization by using context, Knowledge Sources, and technological decisions to generate more assertive, high-quality code. The Stack AI configuration empowers innovation and high-quality coding when using the tool.

By providing accurate code suggestions and quick commands that automate tasks, the developer experience is optimized. This leads to increased team productivity, allowing long, complicated, and costly projects—such as modernizing legacy systems—to progress more smoothly.

So, check out the video on how the StackSpot AI interface works and our resources to facilitate software modernization.

Advantages of AI-driven modernization

The AI efficiency for developers impacts everything from day-to-day tasks to the modernization strategy for legacy systems. 

Below, we will highlight the significant advantages of modernizing a company’s entire infrastructure:

• Help in extracting information;
• Accelerating source code for modern architectures;
• Building new platforms;
• Migration to the cloud, and more. 

Find out more about each advantage of adopting AI-driven modernization.

Supports the day-to-day development of a new application

A contextualized AI tool is an option for developers who want to make their routines more accessible and automated without sacrificing code quality. 

 Aided by artificial intelligence, devs receive suggestions when generating and reviewing code, testing, implementing, and documenting. In this way, they reduce the time spent on routine tasks and can focus on crafting creative solutions that  can have a strong impact on the business.

This advantage is valuable when modernizing legacy systems because new applications must be developed during this process, and AI can help deal with existing ones and create new ones.

Learns from the context

To modernize the legacy system, generative artificial intelligence needs to learn the context of your business to provide accurate and relevant suggestions. 

This process occurs when RAG (Retrieval Augmentation Generation) integrates the retrieval of knowledge sources, StackSpot AI’s Knowledge Sources, with the advanced modeling capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Knowledge Sources enhance the generator component of RAG systems and provide the necessary depth and breadth. This system provides rich, relevant, and contextualized content, a true foundation of information processing and retrieval.

For example, even functionalities such as liking suggestions made by the AI—which StackSpot AI also has— support learning and the understanding that the answer is correct.

Generates technical documentation

Regarding technical software documentation, AI keeps detailed records of changes, including system updates and feature implementations. 

This is exactly what we see in StackSpot AI: the tool uses learns from the code base and generates documentation. This document is crucial because for keeping the entire team on the same page, making it possible to:

• Understand all the business rules in the code;
• Serve as the basis for Test-Driven Development (TDD) or Behavior Driven Development (BDD);
• Assist in creating the migration roadmap by facilitating prioritization and offering insights into necessary code changes.

The tool can help tech writers keep content up to date and accurate, benefiting the documentation production process even when it comes to keeping up with technological evolution. 

Ultimately, the combination of AI, precision, tech writers, and human creativity offers more comprehensive, clear, and engaging software documentation.

Converts programming languages

One of the major challenges of modernization is converting outdated programming languages into modern ones. A key difficulty lies in the shortage of professionals skilled in these outdated languages to carry out the migration. 

However, AI’s potential is enormous: The tools understand the code and analyze its relevance, managing not only to migrate from one language to another but also to apply the necessary changes during this process. 

At this point, the developer optimizes their time by focusing on reviewing and approving the results generated by artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the company accomplishes what was once considered impossible: translating a system into modern languages and architectures.

Creates the migration roadmap

Before migrating your operations to a new environment, it’s a good idea to create a cloud migration roadmap. This action can save costs, boost team productivity and ensure more agile processes. And how can AI help?

Generative artificial intelligence can assist throughout the migration process, from assessment and roadmap planning to other phases, for example: 

• Analyzing the current infrastructure and recommending strategies for application migration;
• Exploring how to optimize costs and identify financial waste;
• Automating processes and generating automation scripts;
• Identifying security risks and drawing up mitigation plans;
• Monitoring system performance and other actions.

Helps with environment migration

With AI support, migration from legacy to cloud tends to be faster and less costly, offering enhanced security and alignment with software development best practices.

Here’s what AI can do during this process:

• Facilitate development integration
• Improve efficiency in the migration process;
• Minimize errors, resulting in fast and assertive outcomes;
• Work with large amounts of data, allowing for more accurate analysis;
• Analyze, identify, and suggest improvements.

Importantly, the two environments can coexist during migration to the cloud. Since the challenge is to migrate information from the legacy system to the modern one, contextualized AI works precisely to reduce the team’s cognitive load during this transition.

Discover Zup Innovation’s Professional Services

Modernizing legacy systems is crucial for companies but is complex, costly, and often time-consuming. That’s why, in addition to offering the StackSpot tool to help you throughout the modernization process, we also provide consulting services (through our parent company Zup Innovation) to assist your company on this journey.

We offer this efficiently, securely, and scalably, with support from our products StackSpot AI, StackSpot EDP, and StackSpot Cloud Services. 

Check out how our AI-driven team promotes modernization:

Analysis and understanding of the application to be modernized

• Map out the existing architecture to identify dependencies and challenges;
• Gather and analyze data related to system usage, performance metrics, and user feedback;
• Identify the Knowledge Sources created and used in the modernization;
• Analyze the technology used, the code, integrations and dependencies, tests, performance, architecture, security, compliance, and CI/CD.

Modernization plan

• Establish criteria for prioritizing modernization based on factors such as business impact, technical feasibility, or ROI;
• Define the architecture, including technology stacks, platform options, and integration strategies;
• Develop a strategy for deploying the modernized system;
• Outline strategies to ensure business continuity and data protection during significant incidents.

Execution of the plan

• Systematically implement new features and updates according to the modernization roadmap;
• Ongoing testing throughout the execution phase to ensure that new features and upgrades work as planned;
• Apply change management practices to manage the migration effectively;
• Release the final version of the system into production, including observability, FinOps, and shutdown of the legacy system.

Conclusion

StackSpot offers a comprehensive platform—including AI and cloud services—for standardizing architectures and automating processes, backed by a team of experts experienced in legacy modernization.

This article showed that AI-driven modernization makes it easier to understand and refactor code, ensuring that the new architecture is implemented effectively and efficiently. 

Finally, when artificial intelligence is contextualized, as with StackSpot AI, these benefits are enhanced by offering even more accurate and objective insights that support the challenging process of modernization.

Find out more about our services! Get in touch with our team of experts and schedule a demo.