Outcreating Mainframe Modernization in U.S. Retirement Services

Overview

With LTM as its Business Creativity partner, a large U.S. retirement services provider modernized its mainframe estate by rehosting 40+ applications to Microsoft Azure using Micro Focus and an automation-led delivery model, lowering platform costs while protecting business continuity. 

A leading U.S. retirement services provider needed to reduce mainframe cost and complexity without disrupting mission-critical platforms. LTM migrated 40+ applications, 10M lines of code, and 25TB of data to Microsoft Azure using Micro Focus, a move-group delivery model, and automation accelerators. The program established a scalable foundation for ongoing modernization.

About the Client

The client is a leading U.S.-based provider of retirement, workplace benefits, and investment management services, supporting millions of individuals, workplace, and institutional customers.

Its integrated workplace offerings span defined contribution and defined benefit retirement plans, public-sector plans, and employee benefits, with a strong emphasis on digital experiences that help participants make confident financial decisions.

This scale and product breadth depend on always-on core platforms that can support high transaction volumes, strict security requirements, and consistent service levels across business lines.

Market Trends in U.S. Retirement and Workplace Benefits

The U.S. retirement and workplace benefits market is shifting toward more integrated, participant-first experiences. Employers are prioritizing holistic financial wellness, in-plan retirement income options, and simplified digital journeys that bring retirement and benefits decisions into one place. At the same time, providers face sustained competitive pressure, tighter regulatory scrutiny, and rising expectations for resilience and service continuity across critical systems.

These trends are pushing retirement and benefits providers to modernize their legacy application estates, which limit speed, scalability, and change throughput. Mainframe-heavy environments can increase cost and constrain release cadence, especially as product complexity grows and digital channels expand. As a result, many organizations are moving toward cloud platforms and automation-led migration approaches that reduce reliance on legacy systems while maintaining stability for mission-critical workloads.

Need for Change

The client’s core platforms were primarily hosted on mainframes, and years of acquisitions added applications and integration dependencies that increased both cost and operational risk.

To navigate these challenges, the organization needed an enterprise application modernization approach capable of scaling across a large legacy estate, avoiding past failures, and safeguarding business continuity for customer-facing retirement platforms.

Key Challenges

• High mainframe costs limited flexibility: Total cost of ownership remained high due to legacy mainframe infrastructure and aging platforms.
• Acquisitions left a fragmented application landscape: Multiple acquired applications and complex integration dependencies made modernization sequencing and change management harder.
• Earlier modernization efforts did not scale: Prior initiatives failed due to unsuitable tools, incorrect approaches, and delivery models that could not scale to enterprise needs.
• Migration had to protect business continuity at enterprise scale: The program needed to move about 10 million lines of code and 25 TB of data supporting 22M+ active policies, with zero impact on continuity.
• Low cloud maturity increased execution risk: Only a small portion of workloads had previously moved to the cloud, raising the bar for governance, controls, and repeatable delivery.
• A heterogeneous mainframe estate raised complexity: The environment combined Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) platforms and custom applications, spanning COBOL, DB2, CICS, JCL, VSAM, and assembler workloads.

LTM’s Solution

As the client’s business creativity partner, LTM developed a structured, automation-led approach to mainframe-to-cloud migration, helping the organization Outcreate the possibilities with absolute stability.

The strategy combined deep mainframe expertise with cloud execution on Microsoft Azure, leveraging repeatable delivery models and governance to minimize enterprise-level risk.  

• Performed enterprise application discovery across 40+ mainframe applications: Mapped dependencies, assessed modernization readiness, and defined migration sequencing.
• Applied a hybrid modernization strategy on Azure: Rehosted about 95% of applications to Micro Focus on Microsoft Azure, while selectively rewriting the remaining 5% with niche technologies for long-term sustainability.
• Executed automation-led migration at scale: Used 15+ solution accelerators from LTM’s Mainframe Center of Excellence through a factory-based modernization model to automate code and data migration.
• Used a Move Group delivery model to manage application clusters: Grouped applications into move units to manage dependencies, control risk, and maintain delivery momentum.
• Provisioned Azure cloud architecture and environments quickly: Set up a secure, enterprise-grade Azure environment within 6–8 weeks to support parallel migration, testing, and validation.
• Established DevOps for the modernized platforms: Built standardized DevOps pipelines to support future production releases on Azure.
• Aligned cross-functional execution for continuity and compliance: Brought mainframe, cloud, data, and security teams together to meet compliance needs and protect resilience and business continuity.
• Integrated enterprise identity for unified access: Implemented Azure Active Directory integration to support unified authentication across modernized applications.

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Business Benefits

• 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗧𝗖𝗢 𝗯𝘆 𝟲𝟬%: Lowered legacy platform costs by moving core workloads to Azure.
• 𝗔𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗨𝗦𝗗 𝟯.𝟱𝗠 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗖𝗢 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: Delivered recurring savings through a repeatable migration approach.
• 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝟲𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Reduced manual effort and improved execution consistency at scale.
• 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘇𝗲𝗿𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Completed the transformation with no impact on business continuity.
• 𝗠𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝟮𝟱 𝗧𝗕 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝟭𝟬𝗠 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗻𝗼 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Sustained uninterrupted operations for platforms supporting 22M+ active policies.
• 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝘀: Improved runbooks, enabled distributed scheduling and reporting, and increased release reliability through DevOps.

Conclusion

The modernization initiative reduced legacy costs while protecting stability and service continuity for mission-critical retirement platforms. By combining structured discovery, Azure-based rehosting, selective modernization, and automation at scale, LTM helped teams think disruptively, own outcomes, and Outcreate a stronger foundation for ongoing transformation.

“LTM partnered with a leading U.S. retirement and financial services provider that was running core workloads on both mainframe and AWS, alongside divested segments. We helped segregate the core business codebase and migrate it to Microsoft Azure, improving agility and reducing operating costs. LTM also served as program manager, coordinating multiple product vendors across the broader application portfolio.”

-Praveen Sinha, Associate Vice President, AI-led Engineering , LTM

Solutions by LTM are built to Outcreate the ordinary. To know more about how we modernize legacy platforms and reduce operating costs without disrupting business-critical services, please contact us.