Paving the Way for Innovation: A Transportation State Agency’s Journey from Mainframe to Cloud

Overview

A statewide transportation agency in the southeastern US plays a vital role in supporting the regional economy and enhancing quality of life for its citizens by maintaining and improving the state’s vast network of roads, bridges, and transportation infrastructure.

With five regional offices and a central headquarters in the state capital, the department oversees a broad range of projects that promote safety, mobility, and economic development. Through its commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and public service, this agency ensures that the state's transportation systems meet the needs of citizens, businesses, and visitors alike, both today and in the future.

Seeking to improve operational efficiency, enhance agility, and lower costs, organizational leaders launched an initiative to migrate their legacy IBM mainframe systems to the cloud. They partnered with Astadia to guide the transition and ensure a confident, seamless migration.

The Challenge

Maintaining critical operations on an aging IBM z/OS mainframe had become increasingly unsustainable. With hundreds of COBOL programs, JCL jobs, legacy databases, and file systems intertwined across essential functions, the organization faced escalating risks.

For some time, the scarcity of skilled mainframe developers had grown more acute, raising concerns about long-term system support. At the same time, operating costs continued to escalate, putting pressure on the state’s IT budget. Even more critically, the rigidity of legacy infrastructure made it difficult to respond quickly to emerging transportation needs, integrate modern digital tools, or deliver new services to the state’s citizens.

Without decisive action, the organization risked falling behind the innovation curve. That had the potential to create service disruptions and increase operational inefficiencies. Recognizing that maintaining the status quo was no longer a viable option, leadership committed to a modernization strategy that would preserve business continuity while opening the door to innovation, scalability, and long-term resilience.

The Solution

To ensure a smooth and low-risk transition, the organization partnered with Astadia, leveraging the company’s proven expertise in mainframe modernization. The process began with a comprehensive assessment, using Astadia’s industry-leading tools to inventory existing assets, analyze the legacy codebase, and map complex dependencies. Based on these insights, Astadia worked with leaders at the agency to develop a phased migration plan aimed at transitioning to a modern, cloud-based architecture while maintaining full functional equivalency.

Astadia's Migration Factory offers the most efficient, thorough, and reliable means of modernizing mainframe systems. In this case, the team used Astadia’s tools to convert nearly 400 COBOL applications and over 570 COBOL copybooks to C#. With the same toolset, they migrated the agency’s mainframe databases to a modern relational database management system (RDBMS). Astadia recreated the agency’s batch processing jobs as script-based workflows, modernizing system operations without disrupting business processes. To support development teams, Astadia also provided CobolBridge licenses, enabling developers to maintain high levels of productivity during the transition.

Naturally, the project also involved extensive testing. Once again, the Migration Factory provided for efficient, thorough, and accurate test automation. Astadia also supported the agency in completing System Integration Tests (SIT) and User Acceptance Testing (UAT). Astadia’s automated tools accelerated these testing and validation processes, giving stakeholders confidence that application functionality, data integrity, and system performance were fully preserved.

Astadia also provided targeted training for developers, database administrators, and operations staff, ensuring that teams were fully prepared to manage and support the new environment. Knowledge transfer sessions and detailed documentation covered the new

architecture, development workflows, and operational procedures, laying the foundation for a successful transition and long-term sustainability.

Through close collaboration, automation, and expert guidance, the organization successfully replatformed its legacy environment, setting the stage for greater agility, scalability, and innovation in the cloud.

The Results

By replatforming their legacy mainframe environment to a modern, cloud-based infrastructure and refactoring their code to C#, this state government organization has positioned itself for a new era of flexibility, scalability, and operational efficiency. That transition, together with the organization’s move to a relational database has eliminated their dependence on aging legacy technologies, significantly easing hiring challenges and reducing long-term maintenance costs.

With the new environment in place, the organization is better equipped to integrate with external systems, partners, and edge technologies, opening up new opportunities for digital innovation. Cloud-native capabilities will allow them to scale more easily, adapt quickly to changing business needs, and deliver improved services to the communities they serve.

Importantly, the modernization effort preserved full functional equivalency, ensuring that critical business processes continued without disruption. Thanks to a carefully planned and expertly executed migration, the organization has not only solved immediate challenges but also created a strong foundation for future growth, agility, and technological resilience.