Heirloom Computing has been recognized by CIOReview Magazine as the recipient of “,” based on our proprietary methodology, reflecting its position in the industry. This profile has been developed by the CIOReview research and editorial team based on insights from an interview with Becky Etheridge, Chief Partner Officer.

Heirloom Computing
Transforming Mainframes For A Future-Ready World

Becky Etheridge, Chief Partner Officer

Novelist L.P. Hartley once said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” This sentiment holds true for today’s IT leaders as they encounter the challenges of aging mainframe systems. Over the last 50 years, mainframes have been the operational backbone for transacting the world’s business, but now it’s time for them to evolve and embrace the agility, flexibility and cloud-readiness that modern enterprises demand.

That’s where Heirloom Computing—a software company—steps in, leading the charge to transform mainframes for today’s digital age and tomorrow’s AI future.

“The mindset of ‘it’s just too difficult’ has shifted. For many CIOs, this change is not just about cost savings but about embracing a technology stack that supports future innovation without sacrificing the reliability these systems are known for,” says Becky Etheridge, Heirloom Computing’s Chief Partner Officer.

By partnering with businesses, global systems integrators (GSI) and cloud providers, Heirloom helps migrate mainframe workloads into cloud-agnostic applications, allowing organizations to break free from the limitations of outdated application stacks.

“We’re 100 percent focused on mainframe migration—that’s what we do,” Etheridge explains. “With our single, integrated platform, combined with a team of mainframe experts holding over 100 patents, a strong Partner ecosystem and global presence, we make the process of mainframe transformation seamless and manageable for our customers.”

This focus on mainframe migration has earned Heirloom Computing industry-wide recognition. Information Service Group (ISG) recently ranked Heirloom as the top multi-cloud provider of mainframe migration software in their 2024 Provider Lens Report. The accolade highlights its leadership and track record in delivering successful, large-scale transformations for clients worldwide.

A Low-Risk Transformative Journey on Your Terms

For those embarking on the transformation journey, two dominant approaches often emerge, replatforming and refactoring. Each comes with its own set of pros and cons.

Replatforming offers a straightforward, low-risk solution, moving mainframe workloads to a modern environment with minimal changes. While safe, it often falls short of delivering true modernization. Refactoring, on the other hand, goes deeper, re-engineering applications for modern use but introducing risks by discarding legacy code and potentially sidelining the experts who know these systems inside out.

Here, businesses often face a dilemma—taking a safe but limited path or embracing risks for real progress.

The Heirloom® solution is all about freedom, choice and control.

It provides a way out of this bind—combining the best of both worlds. Heirloom’s platform uniquely integrates both replatforming and refactoring outcomes, giving customers the ability to navigate their journey without the limitations of having to choose just one path.

“We put the reins in the hands of our customers, empowering them to dial up or down on both replatforming and refactoring outcomes based on what makes the most sense for their business,” says Etheridge.

Flexibility means customers can start small, make incremental changes, and accelerate when the time is right without losing control of the journey.

We Put The Reins In The Hands Of Our Customers, Empowering Them To Dial Up Or Down Both Replatforming And Refactoring Outcomes Based On What Makes The Most Sense For Their Business

Heirloom eliminates one of the major risks of transformation projects—the loss of familiarity and expertise. Unlike traditional refactoring approaches, Heirloom retains the legacy code to work alongside functionally equivalent object-oriented Java, ensuring that existing knowledge and skills remain valuable in the new environment.

“We don’t take an application; change it entirely and return it in a different language. We leave it open, giving our customers the power to decide if they want to continue maintaining and developing in the legacy code, usually COBOL or PL/1 or start using the functionally equivalent Java code that the Heirloom platform generates. If a customer’s aim is to move completely to Java they can do so at a pace that works for them. It’s about reducing risk, recognizing the value and knowledge of the existing team whilst controlling a path to complete modernization.” adds Etheridge.

So, when one of the world’s leading luxury automotive manufacturers decided to move away from the mainframe, Heirloom provided the flexibility they needed to modernize while staying in control. Their critical application supported the entire vehicle ordering process, making the successful migration to a modern cloud environment with the original PL/1 code vital. Business was uninterrupted, and the client’s team was able to migrate and modernize this essential workload with the option to continue developing in the original PL/1 code, something that was key to the success of this modernization project.

Cloud Agnostic, Cost-Cutting and In Control

A key element underpinning a low-risk migration journey is Heirloom’s compiler-based technology. High levels of automation and orchestration reduce the manual effort often required in migration projects, minimizing human error and lowering overall risk. Automation keeps the process seamless, while orchestration ensures each part of the transformation is synchronized. Together, these features address one of the major hurdles of mainframe modernization—reducing complexity without sacrificing quality or control.

And this control is far more than just technical flexibility—it’s about keeping people involved. In many modernization approaches, the legacy system is “locked down” and handed over to a third party. But Heirloom ensures that subject matter experts and core teams remain integral throughout the transformation. Engaging the original experts alongside Heirloom architects, the process not only minimizes risk but ensures transparency and ownership are preserved.

“Our approach often brings together a powerful combination—the ‘power of three,’ the customer, Heirloom, and the customer’s chosen GSI. It’s in these partnerships where transformation truly excels,” says Etheridge.

The modern world doesn’t fit into rigid boxes and neither should a company’s IT infrastructure. Heirloom’s platform independent nature means it will plug and play with any modern infrastructure. It allows customers to migrate mainframe workloads to the platform of their choice, including public, private or hybrid clouds, on-premise or even on the mainframe. This capability eliminates the dreaded platform lock-in, allowing businesses to adapt to new opportunities and challenges without being bound to a single vendor.

“It’s all about choice. Our customers decide not only what their projects look like but also how and where to execute them,” says Etheridge.

Heirloom has been designed to deliver value fast. It migrates mainframe workloads an order of magnitude faster than other solutions. This accelerates the ROI to less than a year with Heirloom clients typically seeing their OpEx reduced by at least 60%, with their applications executing on open, agile technology stacks. In other words, migrate fast, modernize much, much faster.

For example, Arek Oy, a provider of pension services for all of Finland’s pension companies, migrated their calculation service consisting of 22 million lines of complex code as a scalable service in just 12 months, outperforming its original mainframe by 152 percent and with anticipated cost savings of at least 80 percent.

An Eye on the Future

Heirloom is setting its sights on the future with a clear focus on one of the hottest topics in technology today—generative AI.

“There’s not a single customer call where generative AI isn’t mentioned. It’s clear that AI will continue to reshape the landscape and with our h/GENAI™, we’re positioned to deliver transformative results for our clients,” says Etheridge.

h/GENAI opens up the possibilities of simplifying and accelerating the mainframe migration journey.

It starts with its ability to automatically generate documentation and insights for monolithic application code. The migration of legacy systems often begins with the laborious task of deciphering vast amounts of application logic, which has accumulated layers over time. Heirloom aims to turn this typically tedious step into a seamless one, using AI to produce instant and reliable documentation. This newfound clarity enables teams to make more informed decisions, creating a solid foundation for an effective migration.

But the impact of h/GENAI goes beyond analysis and documentation. Testing is one of the most resource-intensive aspects of mainframe migration—a critical process that often consumes up to 50 percent of project time and resources. Heirloom’s h/GENAI transforms this stage by automating the creation of testware, vastly accelerating the testing phases. This automation is crucial because it frees up resources and helps reduce the overall duration of migration projects, allowing businesses to experience the benefits of modernization sooner rather than later.

“We’re 100 Percent Focused On Mainframe Migration—That’s What We Do. With Our Single, Integrated Platform, Combined With A Team Of Mainframe Experts Holding Over 100 Patents, A Strong Partner Ecosystem And Global Presence, We Make The Process Of Mainframe Transformation Seamless And Manageable For Our Customers”

Perhaps the most groundbreaking application of h/GENAI is in the post-migration refactoring of applications. While Heirloom already provides a Java framework that extends the platform to precisely execute mainframe applications, generative AI adds a new dimension of flexibility and speed. Traditionally, updating framework dependencies with modern equivalents was achievable, but it involved a slow, meticulous process. h/GENAI makes this transformation possible at unprecedented speed—accelerating modernization efforts by several orders of magnitude and enabling customers to quickly evolve beyond the architectural constraints of their legacy systems.

“While tools like transpilers and compilers remain essential for maintaining the integrity of legacy systems, h/GENAI complements these methods by pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in terms of speed and scalability of value-oriented modernization,” says Etheridge.

So, Is It Time to Reimagine Your Mainframe?

The answer is to choose a partner who balances speed with risk reduction, putting control back in the hands of those who know their business best.

Heirloom’s advice to CIOs is simple—select a vendor with a proven track record and don’t hesitate to ask for real-life examples of successful migrations. Ensure executive alignment at all levels and most importantly, work with a partner like Heirloom—one that leverages your existing expertise to future-proof your business, without abandoning the past.

Learn more: www.heirloomcomputing.com

Contact: info@heirloomcomputing.com

Rethinking IBM Mainframe Modernization Strategy

IBM mainframe modernization has moved from a technical discussion to a question of long-term enterprise governance. For executives, the pressure is not driven by innovation agendas but by the need to balance cost discipline, regulatory stability and continuity of mission-critical systems. Mainframes persist because they work. They process high-volume transactions, enforce complex rules and support obligations that cannot tolerate failure. Modernization is less about replacement and more about controlled evolution under real economic and operational constraints. One of the most underestimated challenges in modernization is the nature of what resides inside legacy environments. Mainframe applications encode business rules refined through decades of regulatory change, operational learning and exception handling. These rules are rarely documented outside the code itself. When modernization approaches reduce the problem to surface-level translation or wholesale rewrites, they risk erasing nuance that only becomes visible once systems return to production. Effective modernization must demonstrate how business meaning survives the transition, not merely how syntax changes. Decision-makers increasingly favor approaches that can surface and preserve embedded logic while reshaping applications into forms that modern development teams can understand, test and maintain with confidence. Control after migration has become equally decisive. Many modernization efforts promise freedom from mainframe constraints but introduce new dependencies by binding applications tightly to specific cloud platforms or proprietary services. While technically modern, these architectures restrict future choices and complicate cost management as pricing models, regulatory requirements or strategic priorities change. Executives now assess modernization outcomes based on whether applications retain deployment flexibility across on-premise environments, public clouds and hybrid models. This flexibility is no longer a technical preference but a strategic safeguard against exchanging one form of lock-in for another. Risk exposure over time further shapes executive judgment. Large modernization programs often require a multi-year commitment before measurable benefits appear, creating governance strain and weakening sustained sponsorship. Approaches that defer production validation or bundle transformation into a single irreversible effort raise the cost of failure. By contrast, modernization paths that enable systems to reach a stable, functional state quickly, prove performance under real workloads and evolve selectively align more closely with enterprise funding models. They allow modernization to proceed as a sequence of business decisions guided by demonstrated value rather than architectural idealism. Taken together, these factors define what executives increasingly regard as a credible standard for IBM mainframe modernization: preservation of business meaning, structural freedom after migration and a paced economic model that delivers early proof without forcing irreversible commitments. Heirloom Computing aligns closely with this framework. Its modernization platform transforms mainframe applications into modern Java while retaining the semantics that govern real-world business behavior. The resulting applications are not coupled to proprietary infrastructure or service layers, allowing organizations to validate changes on existing environments and adjust deployment models as conditions evolve. Its staged approach enables early exit from mainframe constraints while supporting selective refactoring based on business priority rather than technical obligation. For organizations modernizing critical systems under real-world constraints, Heirloom represents a disciplined and defensible choice....Read more

Company
Heirloom Computing

Management
Becky Etheridge, Chief Partner Officer

Description
Heirloom Computing is a software company that partners with clients and Global System Integrators to migrate mainframe workloads to modern stacks that are service agnostic for execution on the cloud on- premise or on the mainframe. By combining deep mainframe expertise with innovative technology, Heirloom ensures companies retain control of their mainframe transformation journey, delivering modernization without compromise.

Heirloom Computing Transforming Mainframes For A Future-Ready World

We Put The Reins In The Hands Of Our Customers, Empowering Them To Dial Up Or Down Both Replatforming And Refactoring Outcomes Based On What Makes The Most Sense For Their Business

Deep Dive

Rethinking IBM Mainframe Modernization Strategy

Heirloom Computing
Transforming Mainframes For A Future-Ready World