Subject: CM evolveIT August 2025 Newsletter

The modern state of static analysis, refactoring, and digital transformation

August 2025

In this issue...

  • Featured: The AI Revolution Has Finally Come for Legacy Code - CM First

  • Article: The Cloud Promise vs. Reality: Why 94% of IT Leaders Are Struggling with Optimization - InfoWorld

  • Video: CM evolveIT 11.7 Latest Advances in Code Analysis and Transformation - CM First

  • Article: The Cloud Promise vs. Reality: Why 94% of IT Leaders Are Struggling with Optimization - InfoWorld

  • Listen: Cutting Through the AI Hype: What Real Data Says About Developer Productivity - Pragmatic Engineer

  • Video Vault: Next-Gen Pair Programming: AI Collaboration on IBM i and IBM z Systems - CM First

  • Intelligence: News to think about...

Featured

The AI Revolution Has Finally Come for Legacy Code


The days of dreading legacy modernization projects are officially over. What once required armies of consultants and risky "big bang" migrations can now be accomplished with AI-powered tools that understand your ancient COBOL, map tangled dependencies, and guide systematic transformation—all while keeping critical systems running.


At the center of this revolution sits CM evolveIT, a maintenance analytics platform that acts like an AI archaeologist, instantly mapping the hidden structures of decades-old codebases and reducing legacy system discovery time by 80%.


The platform's latest version integrates advanced AI models to automatically document business rules, generate plain-English explanations of complex code, and even transform legacy applications into modern Java and JavaScript workloads incrementally.


The real breakthrough comes from building a complete AI stack around CM evolveIT, combining it with modern tools like Kubernetes for containerization, Jenkins for CI/CD, and emerging AI platforms like LangGraph for natural language code rewriting. This three-tier approach—analyze with CM evolveIT, intelligently refactor with GenAI, then modernize incrementally—is helping organizations preserve decades of embedded business logic while transitioning to cloud-native architectures.


With 90% of organizations currently held back by legacy systems and the modernization market expected to reach $36.86 billion by 2027, the message is clear: AI-powered legacy modernization isn't just an option anymore—it's essential for survival. Legacy developers are no longer just maintaining old systems; they're becoming the architects of their organizations' digital futures.


Read our AI full-stack strategy with CM evolveIT leading the way →

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 one of these two webinars now...

Mainframe

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.


Watch Now

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.


Watch Now

Heads Up

The Cloud Promise vs. Reality: Why 94% of IT Leaders Are Struggling with Optimization


The honeymoon phase of cloud adoption is officially over. What began as a cost-saving revolution has evolved into a complex optimization challenge, with a staggering 94% of global IT leaders now struggling with cloud cost management, according to the 2025 Crayon IT Cost Optimization Report. The original vision of paying only for what you use has collided with the harsh reality of mismanaged resources, overprovisioning, and poor visibility into spending patterns. As enterprises embraced multicloud strategies for flexibility and reliability, many discovered they were simply multiplying their cost management headaches across different platforms.


The shift from migration to optimization represents a fundamental change in how organizations approach cloud strategy. IT leaders are no longer asking whether to move to the cloud, but how to intelligently balance workloads between public cloud and on-premises infrastructure. With 57% of survey participants identifying cloud cost optimization as their top priority and 40% expecting AI-related expenses to be their biggest financial challenge over the next three years, the message is clear: the era of "cloud first" has given way to "cloud smart."


Organizations that master this transition—through FinOps practices, workload-first strategies, and hybrid architectures—will unlock the cloud's true potential without sacrificing their financial health.


Read the full article at InfoWorld →

Listen

Cutting Through the AI Hype: What Real Data Says About Developer Productivity


Laura Tacho, CTO at DX, joins The Pragmatic Engineer to tackle the gap between bold AI productivity claims and actual results from 180+ companies. Her research reveals some uncomfortable truths: while AI tools can generate code faster than developers can type, the time savings are far smaller than most assume—developers only spend 20-25% of their time coding to begin with, so even a 10% improvement in coding speed barely moves the productivity needle.


More surprisingly, DX's study found that AI tools sometimes decrease developer satisfaction, and many developers aren't using AI at all despite company rollouts. Tacho argues that code is actually a liability (not an asset), roadmaps are becoming obsolete in favor of rapid experimentation portfolios, and measuring AI success through acceptance rates or lines of code generated misses the bigger picture of business impact and developer experience.


Listen now at the Pragmatic Engineer →

Video Vault

Next-Gen Pair Programming: AI Collaboration on IBM i and IBM z Systems


Join us for a cutting-edge webinar that merges the art of pair programming with the innovation of AI for both IBM i and IBM z systems. This session is dedicated to COBOL developers working on IBM's midrange and mainframe platforms, offering a deep dive into how AI can amplify coding collaboration and efficiency.


In this webinar, we will:

  • Discuss the integration of AI-driven pair programming in IBM i and IBM z COBOL development.

  • Address the unique challenges of maintaining and evolving COBOL applications with AI support.

  • Showcase a live demonstration of AI tools tailored to IBM i and IBM z developers.

  • Share actionable strategies for embedding AI into the pair programming workflow on both platforms.

Whether you're involved in IBM i or IBM z development, this webinar will equip you with the knowledge to leverage AI for better code quality, faster problem-solving, and more productive pair programming sessions. Engage with our experts and take the first step towards a smarter, AI-assisted development future.


Watch the video now →

Are you tired of time-consuming manual testing software applications? Fortra's Automate Plus RPA is here to help. Join us for a webinar where we review the features of this powerful tool and show you how it can revolutionize your software testing processes, making it better, more accurate, and quicker to get results.


Watch the video →

Frightened about the prospect of your legacy IBM i and z application developers leaving? We have a solution that can put your fears to rest. In this webinar, we demonstrate how you can “refactor” your legacy app developed in COBOL, RPG, or CA 2E (Synon) directly to maintainable runtime-free Java and JS.


Watch the video →

 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-committment fifteen minute conversation with CM First Group tech.

Get rock solid Broadcom support

CM First Support

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

CM evolveIT current version is 11.7.

You can read more about CM evolveIT in our white paper CM evolveIT Data Lineage, or get in touch with us directly to learn about these new features and more.

We upgrade CM evolveIT customers to the newest versions continuously. If you have any questions just send us a note to info@cmfirstgroup.com.


Other CM First 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 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

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