AWS Transform: AI for Legacy Modernization Projects

Migrations follow the same runbook, every time

Over the past years, most projects the ACA cloud team has worked on involved some form of legacy modernization: migrations from on-premise datacenters to the cloud, or from monolith applications to containerized microservices running on Kubernetes. Some of these projects were straightforward, others complex and time-consuming.

Across nearly all of them, two things kept coming back:

• The runbook for a migration looks more or less the same every time.
• Several tasks repeat themselves across different migrations.

That combination makes this type of work a good candidate for automation. AWS Transform is AWS's answer: an AI tool built to guide teams through migrations, with the promise of saving time and completing projects faster and at lower cost.

Four core capabilities since GA in May 2025

AWS Transform reached general availability in May 2025 with four core functions:

• Assessment: build a business case for a migration to AWS.
• VMware: migrate VMs running on VMware to Amazon EC2.
• Mainframe: modernize applications running on mainframe systems.
• .NET: modernize and migrate Windows-based .NET applications to Linux.

AWS Transform Custom adds pre-built and custom transformations

AWS Transform got more interesting when AWS Transform Custom was introduced in December 2025. Its custom transformation agent includes out-of-the-box transformations for common scenarios: Python and Node.js runtime upgrades, Lambda function modernization, AWS SDK updates across multiple languages, and Java 8 to 17 upgrades.

At the time of writing, AWS has published around 30 managed custom transformations. Two stand out for ACA specifically: the Java/Spring Boot upgrade and the Java performance optimization transformation.

Containerization: the feature I'm most curious about

One of the newest additions, released in May 2026, is automatic replatforming of an application to containers. Since ACA has been running applications in containers for a long time, this step is one of the most recurring and time-consuming tasks for our teams.

After a talk on AWS Transform, I discussed this feature with AWS's own experts. They told me container best practices are factored into the process, not just the container build itself. I haven't tested it yet, but I'm looking forward to trying it and sharing my insights. AWS documents the process here.

Key takeaways

• Legacy modernization projects tend to repeat the same patterns, which makes them a strong fit for automation.
• AWS Transform now covers assessment, VMware, mainframe, and .NET modernization, plus custom transformations for runtimes, Lambda, SDKs, and Java upgrades.
• The newest containerization feature, released in May 2026, could shorten one of the most time-consuming steps in ACA's own migration work.

We haven't tried AWS Transform on a live project yet, but we're planning to. If we do, we'll share what we find in a follow-up post. In the meantime, more details are available in AWS's own documentation.  It's also worth following AWS's announcement blog for new capabilities.

Let's work together!

Curious how AWS Transform could apply to your own migration project? 
Get in touch with ACA's cloud team.