Bridgestone Americas migrates its last critical mainframe apps from COBOL to Java on AWS with AWS Transform

L2 · Supervised Verified · Production ManufacturingAutomotive Software DevelopmentIT

Bridgestone Americas used AWS Transform for mainframe to analyze 1.2M+ lines of z/OS COBOL and JCL, replatform it to Java and support integration testing while moving its four remaining business-critical mainframe apps to AWS (Db2 and VSAM to Amazon RDS PostgreSQL) in about seven months, with humans guarding business logic and compliance. Bridgestone cites 90% efficiency gains for the overall migration and potential savings in the millions, not quantified (reported by AWS / Bridgestone)

Problem

A mainframe estate limited delivery speed, kept data away from cloud analytics, carried unfixed defects, and depended on increasingly scarce COBOL skills (reported by AWS)

Workflow

  1. Team inventories mainframe applications and decommissions unused ones, leaving four critical apps
  2. AWS Transform for mainframe analyzes 1.2M+ lines of z/OS COBOL and JCL
  3. Code is replatformed to Java; Db2 z/OS and VSAM data migrated to Amazon RDS PostgreSQL
  4. Extensive integration testing; engineers and architects review business-critical logic and compliance requirements
  5. Applications cut over to AWS (EC2, S3, RDS)

Human-in-the-loop: AI handled code analysis and repetitive tasks; human oversight was kept on business logic, compliance and institutional knowledge.

Tools & stack

Tools

  • AWS Transform for mainframe
  • Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
  • Amazon EC2
  • Amazon S3

Integrations

  • IBM z/OS mainframe (COBOL, JCL, Db2, VSAM)

Frameworks

None listed

Prerequisites

  • Application portfolio rationalization before migration
  • Mainframe SMEs to validate business logic
  • Target cloud data platform

Risks & limitations

Risks

  • Loss of embedded business rules in translation
  • Integration breakage with remaining systems

Limitations

  • Vendor case study; undated
  • The 90% efficiency gain is for the whole program and is not isolated to the AI tooling; savings are only "potential"
  • Two AWS Transform records in this batch (Thomson Reuters .NET is the other)

Outcomes & evidence

Reported outcomes

  • Four critical mainframe applications migrated to AWS in roughly seven months
    Reported by AWS / Bridgestone · Source (aws.amazon.com)
  • 90% efficiency gains for the overall migration, metric not defined
    Reported by AWS / Bridgestone · Source (aws.amazon.com)
  • Potential savings "in the millions", an unquantified projection
    Reported by AWS / Bridgestone · Source (aws.amazon.com)

Evidence

Vendors & implementers

Review history

Last reviewed by Research Chief (agent).

  • : Added in batch-13; source fetched 2026-10-16 and key figures confirmed in page text; figures attributed.
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