How IBM cut Java modernization time by 70%

Modernizing a 20-year-old system is no small task, especially when it powers one of the most complex systems in the IBM® Financing portfolio.

IBM Financing’s customer leasing operations helps clients fund IT infrastructure and software through predictable, flexible leasing plans. But over time, the Global Contract Management System (GCMS) became deeply integrated into the daily operations of IBM Financing and grew increasingly outdated.

With much of the application still running on Java™ 8 and a growing backlog of enhancements, the system accumulated significant technical debt, making modernization both necessary and challenging.

To tackle these challenges, IBM Financing’s GCMS team worked with IBM software product teams as a Client Zero engagement.

The collaboration focused on a portion of GCMS, which was modernized and deployed to an alternative IBM Cloud® environment. This effort enabled the teams to test modernization tool capabilities across discovery, code transformation, and deployment. All while navigating the real constraints of an aging Java-based™ system with limited documentation and critical business dependencies.

The experience provided valuable insights into tool performance under real-world enterprise conditions and helped refine the offerings within IBM JSphere Suite for Java. By piloting tools that automated code fixes, surfaced hidden dependencies and supported cloud-native transition workflows, the GCMS team helped shape solutions that are now available to enterprise developers facing similar modernization hurdles.

The GCMS team’s work yielded measurable outcomes that illustrate what’s possible with the right tools and partnership. By leveraging components of the JSphere Suite for Java, they had the following results:

• Reducing their timeline by 70%, cutting modernization from 12 weeks to just 3–4 weeks
• Saving 160+ hours on code and configuration remediation
• Experiencing >99% time savings in application discovery (from 120 hours to just 1)

These outcomes show that with the right tools and collaboration, even the most entrenched legacy systems can be modernized quickly, cost-effectively and without business disruption.

"Early access and involvement in testing these tools enabled my team to
influence cutting-edge modernization tools by accelerating their innovation and
ensuring enterprise-readiness before reaching IBM clients."

– Teddy Ng, Technical Solution Architect | GCMS

The insights from this collaboration helped refine the JSphere Suite for Java, making it a more powerful, real-world-tested option for organizations facing similar challenges with legacy Java applications.

The GCMS team’s modernization journey began with visibility. Using the Application Modernization Accelerator (AMA), they analyzed their legacy Java workloads to uncover hidden dependencies, estimate migration effort and identify viable modernization paths. This discovery phase helped reduce upfront planning time and gave the team a clear direction for what came next.

Next, they accelerated code transformation with watsonx Code Assistant® (wCA). By combining automated and assisted remediation, the team was able to generate AI-recommended fixes for outdated syntax and architecture patterns. Within hours, they achieved what would have taken weeks of developer time.

Finally, after transforming their Java codebase by using wCA for Enterprise Java Applications, they wanted to validate the cloud-readiness of their modernized code. The team tested deployment by using Enterprise Application Service for Java (EASeJ) in a dedicated IBM Cloud environment.

EASeJ’s fully managed runtime, with GitOps-centric management and CI/CD support, enabled the team to simulate cloud-native operations and assess how well the tools met their enterprise-grade requirements.

These tools are all part of the JSphere Suite for Java, IBM’s purpose-built suite for modernizing enterprise Java applications with flexibility, automation and AI. While watsonx Code Assistant (wCA) is not included by default, it is easily accessible and can be integrated to enhance the modernization experience.

AMA, wCA and EASeJ played a distinct role in the journey, working together to reduce risk, improve efficiency, and accelerate execution:

• Application Modernization Accelerator: Identifies modernization strategies through automated analysis of Java workloads, surfacing dependencies, estimating effort, and generating intelligent migration guidance to accelerate planning and reduce manual discovery.
• Watsonx Code Assistant: Uses generative AI to automate code remediation, accelerate Java upgrades, and modernize legacy applications, providing real-time recommendations, similarity checks, and in-IDE assistance to streamline development and help ensure code quality.
• Enterprise Application Service for Java: A fully managed application platform that enables cloud deployment of enterprise Java apps with integrated CI/CD, GitOps workflows and infrastructure automation—removing the operational overhead of maintaining runtime and middleware layers.

By working closely with IBM’s software product team, the GCMS team helped pressure-test tools in the JSphere Suite for Java, validating their ability to tackle Java 8 technical debt, speed up containerization, and apply AI-powered automation. This collaboration gave both teams confidence in how the suite performs in complex enterprise environments, ultimately shaping more resilient solutions for clients facing similar modernization challenges. 

In doing so, the GCMS team successfully balanced technical debt mitigation with the ongoing delivery of critical business and legal requirements.

You don’t need to start from scratch or take massive risks to modernize. The IBM JSphere Suite for Java has already been tested under real enterprise pressure, from tackling Java 8 technical debt to deploying AI-powered automation. 

Now, it's your turn. If you're still running on legacy frameworks, juggling CI/CD issues or trying to prep for Java 8 end-of-support, these tools are built to meet you where you are and help you move forward with confidence. 

See EASeJ in action with a demonstration, and dive deeper into the full JSphere Suite. Explore the IDC report on IBM WebSphere Liberty to see how EASeJ drives faster, lower-risk modernization across enterprise Java applications. Or dive into the blog for a closer look at how EASeJ and AMA accelerate Java modernization.

You can also join the WebSphere Application Server and Liberty TechXchange community to ask questions, share feedback and connect with others navigating the same modernization journey.