Subject: CM First Group July 2026 Newsletter

Explore the future of modernization

 July 2026

In this issue...

  • Featured: Nine Months to Three Days? Read the Fine Print on IBM Bob - CM First Group

  • Conference: Go virtual!

  • Broadcom Support: Let us Help You Get the Support You Need

  • Article: AI is making the mainframe harder to retire, not easier - Computer Weekly

  • Intelligence: Further Reading on the Web

Heads Up

Nine Months to Three Days? Read the Fine Print on IBM Bob


IBM says a partner squeezed a nine-month modernization program into three days. Impressive, if you stop reading at the headline.


Look closer, and what actually got compressed was code generation, the usual AI target. Everything downstream got pushed off, and IBM's own survey data says the same thing: the bottleneck moved to review and validation.


In a legacy shop, somebody eats that bill. Usually your most irreplaceable people, unless they've got a deterministic map to verify against.


Read the full article  →

Conference

Go virtual!


The 15th CA 2E / CA Plex Worldwide Conference runs August 31 through September 2 in Nashville, and this year's theme, "Race to the AI Future," is exactly the conversation many IT leaders are having internally right now: what AI actually changes for teams running model-driven and legacy environments, and what it doesn't


Speakers include Chi Chen, Broadcom's CA 2E/CA Plex Evangelist, and IBM's Tim Rowe, Business Architect for Application Development on IBM i, alongside practitioners who run these systems every day.


If Nashville isn't in the travel budget this year, the virtual pass brings the conference to you.


You'll get live access to the same sessions the in-person audience sees, from platform roadmaps to modernization strategy, without the flight, the hotel, or three days out of the office. For leaders weighing what's next for a CA 2E or CA Plex estate, it's the most concentrated dose of roadmap clarity and peer experience available anywhere this year.


Registration is open now at plex2e.com. Send the developers who can travel, and pick up virtual passes for the rest of the team so everyone's working from the same picture.


Register now →

Announcing CM evolveIT 11.7


Available for Streaming: Join us for informative, hands-on sessions focused on the new CM evolveIT 11.7 release. 


Tailored for future-minded developers, these sessions showcase groundbreaking enhancements aimed at revolutionizing your code analysis and transformation workflows. Expect hands-on demonstrations that you can take to your development workflows right away.

Watch a webinar now...

Mainframe COBOL

Latest Advances in Mainframe COBOL Code Analysis and Transformation

Learn about cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools that promise streamlined analysis and transformation processes, automated tools that convert legacy COBOL code to Java, and advanced code slicing.


IBM i

Latest Advances in IBM i Code Analysis and Transformation

Learn how to cut your analysis costs by up to 80% with new capabilities. We'll demo new CA 2E (Synon) and CA Plex superpowers, AI and Code slicing innovations, and improved support for DB2 and COBOL and more.


Heads Up

AI is making the mainframe harder to retire, not easier


The conversation has quietly flipped from "when do we leave the mainframe" to "how do we make it the anchor of an AI-era architecture," and this piece captures the turn precisely. 


It pairs the highest platform-commitment numbers in the BMC survey's 20-year history with a Gartner analyst putting a real price tag on failed exits: $20 to $40 million, and more work at the end, not less. 


If you're forming a view on why modernize-in-place is winning the argument, start here.


Read the full analysis at Computer Weekly  →

Listen

The Only Thing Worse Than Technical Debt is Newly Discovered Technical Debt


AFLAC's CIO/CISO Tim Callahan makes a case worth sitting with: AI tools are now surfacing years of accumulated technical debt at machine speed, faster than most organizations can even triage what they're finding.


It's a sharp companion to this issue's theme, a reminder that visibility without a plan just turns into a different kind of chaos. 


Worth the listen if you've ever wondered what happens the day your tools finally show you everything that's been hiding in the codebase.


Listen now at the CISO Series podcast

 Broadcom Support 


Many enterprises struggle with obtaining Broadcom support for their CA 2E (Synon, COOL:2E) or CA Plex systems


If you're working with an older unsupported release, upgrading your IBM OS, or otherwise under the shadow of lapsed maintenance, we can get you back on Broadcom support based on your unique situation. We specialize in all sizes of customers.


Fill out our 2 minute form and schedule a no-commitment fifteen minute conversation with a CM First Group technical rep.

CM First Support

Current CM First Group customers can access tutorials and submit support tickets at support.cmfirstgroup.com.

Current Releases


CM WebClient 1.8.8 (with nightly builds) For details, go here.

CM Matchpoint ALM 7.0 Build 004. For details, go here.

CM evolveIT 11.7, last supported 10.6
CM M3 2024 Edition
CA Plex 7.3, last supported 7.2.1 (as of October 31, 2024)
→ Details can be found here at Broadcom (login required)
CA 2E 8.7.4, last supported 8.7 (as of October 31, 2024)
→ Details can be found here at Broadcom (login required)
Contact CM First to learn more: info@cmfirstgroup.com

Intelligence