AS/Forward Platform Addresses IBM i Workforce Crisis Through Automated RPG Migration

Golden Path Digital announced the launch of AS/Forward, an advanced intelligence and automated transpilation platform engineered to solve the most critical challenge facing the IBM i community: the Workforce Cliff. By combining deep codebase forensics with automated RPG-to-modern-language migration, the platform provides a secure, high-speed bridge for organizations transitioning away from legacy dependencies without disrupting core business operations. The IBM i platform, formerly known as the AS/400, has served as the backbone of global commerce for decades, powering mission-critical operations in banking, logistics, and manufacturing while handling trillions of dollars in transactions daily.

Recent industry data indicates the average age of an RPG developer is now 55 or older, creating a systemic threat as this veteran workforce reaches retirement age and companies lose the tribal knowledge required to maintain and evolve these complex systems. The Workforce Cliff represents a present-day reality for thousands of enterprises, with many systems having been modified thousands of times over thirty years without updated documentation, making them effectively a black box for newer IT staff. The platform was built to ensure that decades of institutional logic are not lost when these experts retire, preserving the intelligence that runs the business rather than merely moving code from one environment to another.

Unlike traditional lift-and-shift tools that merely move technical debt, the platform emphasizes Codebase Clarity as the foundational phase of any modernization journey. Before transpiling any code, the system functions as a comprehensive intelligence engine performing deep-tissue dependency mapping and impact analysis to uncover hidden relationships within codebases that may have been forgotten over decades of iterative updates. By generating automated, natural-language documentation and audit-ready descriptions of business logic, the solution provides IT leadership with complete transparency of their entire estate, enabling data-driven decisions rather than navigating transitions in the dark.

A hallmark of the technology is its ability to convert legacy RPG into a wide array of modern, industry-standard programming languages including Python, Java, Node.js, JavaScript, C#, and .NET. This multi-language flexibility represents a strategic necessity for modern enterprises, allowing organizations to break their reliance on a dwindling supply of RPG specialists by moving core business logic into languages with massive, global talent pools. This shift enables companies to integrate legacy systems with modern DevOps practices, cloud-native architectures, and AI-driven development workflows, creating agile IT environments capable of responding to market changes in days rather than months.

The platform provides a stark alternative to Big Bang modernization failures through its incremental de-risking approach, enabling program-by-program migration rather than total system replacement. This bridge methodology allows organizations to move at their own pace, validating every individual workflow in a production-like environment before fully decommissioning legacy components, reducing business interruption risk to near zero while providing a clear, measurable path to full modernization. Organizations can see immediate value without the existential threat of a failed full-system cutover.

Financial benefits are transformative compared to traditional consulting models that rely on manual code rewrites and heavy human intervention, typically costing between 5 million and 20 million dollars per project. The platform typically delivers a cost reduction of 10x to 50x compared to these legacy models while dramatically accelerating timelines from 5-to-7-year commitments to 12- to 24-month achievements. This allows enterprises to realize return on investment within the same budget cycles in which projects were initiated, providing significant competitive advantage in an economy where capital efficiency is paramount.

To meet stringent requirements of banking, insurance, and healthcare sectors, the architecture is designed to be completely provider-agnostic, allowing organizations to choose running the engine locally via Ollama or within secure, private cloud environments like AWS Bedrock. This design ensures sensitive proprietary logic and customer data never leave client firewalls, maintaining local control over migration processes so leaders in highly regulated industries can modernize with total peace of mind regarding intellectual property security and compliance. The platform does not require an external internet connection to function, protecting core enterprise intellectual property from external exposure.

AS/Forward represents a paradigm shift in how enterprises approach IBM i legacy systems, moving the industry away from high-stakes, multi-year gambles toward strategic control and operational clarity. As the window for controlled transition begins to close due to the aging workforce, this platform provides the tools and roadmap necessary to secure the operational future of enterprises for the next generation, ensuring systems that built the modern world are equipped to thrive in the digital future.