AWS unveils new features for Amazon Q Developer AI tool

Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduces new capabilities for its Amazon Q Developer to assist in the transformation of legacy workloads.

Amazon Q Developer, an AI-powered assistant, aims to aid organisations in migrating and modernising Windows .NET, VMware, and mainframe workloads. The new capabilities promise to reduce the timeline and expenses typically associated with these large-scale projects.

The service is designed to modernise Windows .NET applications to Linux, promising up to four times faster processes and a reduction in licensing costs by approximately 40%. Additionally, it transforms VMware workloads to cloud-native architectures more swiftly and simplifies mainframe modernisation undertakings by cutting down on labour-intensive tasks. Companies like ADP, Amdocs, and Toyota Motor North America have started utilising the service to enhance their legacy workload management.

Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, Vice President of Technology at AWS, commented, "We are combining Amazon Q Developer with our nearly two decades of experience helping organisations migrate and modernise their legacy workloads on AWS to accelerate and simplify large-scale transformations. This is a game-changer for customers and partners looking to move off of Windows .NET, VMware, and mainframes. Now, Amazon Q significantly speeds up application transformation projects with agents that can autonomously complete some of the most labour-intensive tasks, such as analysing, planning, code generation, and testing, saving customers time and money, and helping them realise the full value of the cloud."

Many organisations face challenges with maintaining legacy applications, which demand specialised skills and often incur high operational costs. These projects can take months or even years. Amazon Q Developer's transformation capabilities intend to ease this process by employing AI agents to automate source code analysis, new code generation, code testing, and implementation.

Earlier this year, Amazon utilised Amazon Q Developer's capabilities internally to migrate numerous Java applications, saving over 4,500 years of development work and achieving USD $260 million in annual cost savings. This initiative extends now to include more transformation projects.

The modernisation of Windows .NET applications can be executed up to four times faster. Amazon Q aids organisations shifting from Windows .NET Framework to cross-platform Windows. NET on Linux, reducing costs, bolstering security, and enhancing performance and development practices. Signaturit Group successfully moved its Windows .NET applications to Linux in a matter of days, rather than the projected eight months.

When transforming VMware workloads, Amazon Q assists by swiftly evaluating workloads, improving security and resilience, and converting network configurations. This capability benefits companies like Cognizant, which aims to modernise VMware workloads for its clients faster and more efficiently.

The mainframe modernisation capability addresses challenges faced by systems such as IBM z/OS. ADP leveraged Amazon Q to generate extensive documentation for COBOL code rapidly, which sped up their modernisation schedule significantly.

The new capabilities are accessible through the Amazon Q Developer web application, facilitating extensive transformation project collaboration. The application supports VMware and mainframe modernisation exclusively, while Windows .NET transformations can still be performed within developers' Integrated Development Environments (IDE).

These advancements are currently available in preview.