A Transportation Modernization Success

Overview

The third largest regional transportation provider in the United States serves millions of commuters each year through a comprehensive network of rail, bus, and light rail services spanning multiple states.

With a mission rooted in safety, reliability, and sustainability, this governmental agency plays a critical role in connecting people to jobs, education, and essential services. Its ongoing investment in infrastructure modernization, customer experience enhancements, and accessible mobility options reflects a long-standing commitment to public service.

Whether navigating daily commutes or supporting major events, this transit system remains a backbone of regional connectivity, empowering communities and driving economic growth across the area it serves.

Leaders at the organization wanted to improve operational efficiencies, increase agility, and reduce costs, so they set out to migrate their legacy IBM mainframe systems to the AWS cloud. They chose Astadia to help them migrate their systems with confidence.

The Challenge

The agency’s legacy systems were large and complex, comprising nearly 5,000 Natural programs and a host of Natural subprograms running in an IBM z/OS environment, collectively accounting for more than 3 million lines of code.

The client’s environment also included a large number of COBOL programs and COBOL copybooks, totaling another half a million lines of code, along with numerous JCL scripts to manage batch job processing.

Like many organizations that rely heavily on mainframe systems, the agency faced significant hiring challenges due to the shortage of skilled mainframe engineers familiar with these technologies. They also recognized that by migrating to the AWS cloud, they could increase organizational agility, rolling out innovations faster than in the past. The agency’s Natural/Adabas architecture had evolved over several decades, resulting in a highly complex, deeply integrated environment that IT leaders knew would be challenging to migrate. They needed a deep bench of seasoned mainframe modernization experts to help them, so they chose the industry-leading team at Astadia.

The Solution

Astadia began by performing a comprehensive assessment of the agency’s existing environment, using proprietary tools that inventory assets, analyze existing code, and map dependencies. Based on that information, they worked with the client to formulate a plan for migrating to the AWS cloud while delivering functionally equivalent systems to the organization’s users. Key elements of the project included the conversion of legacy code to C#, migrating databases and files to AWS SQL, and replacing traditional batch processing with modern scripting tools. Using the Astadia FastTrack Modernization approach, code conversion and data migration were fully automated. The project also involved rigorous testing to confirm that data integrity, application functionality, and performance fully conformed to client expectations. Astadia’s integrated testing tools enabled comprehensive, automated testing, giving the project’s sponsors high confidence in the capabilities of the migrated systems.

Astadia’s deliverables include a fully functional production environment on the AWS cloud, as well as a non-production test and development landscape. The target architecture will allow the agency to move toward an agile DevOps model built around modern tools and a highly scalable infrastructure.

The Results

Having successfully converted their mainframe application portfolio from COBOL and Natural/Adabas to C# and AWS SQL, this major transportation network has made a strategic move to the cloud. This shift has enhanced their flexibility and scalability while easing their hiring challenges, lowering costs, and improving operational efficiencies.

With AWS SQL as their database, the organization is better positioned to fully leverage the benefits of the cloud, easily integrating with external systems, partners, and edge devices. This shift also enables them to attract and retain a broader pool of development talent by moving away from reliance on legacy mainframe skill sets. By adopting a phased modernization approach, the organization has preserved full functional equivalence while reducing operational complexity and future-proofing their technology stack. Following this successful migration, they are in a strong position to build upon their cloud transformation and accelerate innovation.