Over the past seven months, Bankdata and Microsoft’s Global Black Belt Team have collaborated to develop an agentic AI framework capable of semi-autonomously converting COBOL code into Java.
The framework is still in its early days, but recent tests demonstrate that it can convert large volumes of legacy code and potentially with relatively limited manual input. The project has now culminated in an open-source release — the framework is freely available on GitHub.
“This is a challenge the global tech industry is grappling with: How do we convert large amounts of legacy code at scale? Many tools can handle small code fragments, but here we have a framework with the potential to go much further,” says Michael Lind Mortensen, Manager in Technology & Developer Enablement at Bankdata.
What’s the business value?
Microsoft and Bankdata are currently exploring how the framework might help modernize Bankdata’s systems more efficiently.
“It’s still early days, but the business potential is promising enough that we want to investigate whether it could, for example, accelerate the analysis phase,” says Peter Bruun, Vice President of Finance & Risk, whose team contributed both data and domain experts to the collaboration.
Black belt in tech
The framework was developed by Microsoft in close collaboration with domain and technology experts from Bankdata. The project gained momentum two months ago when Bankdata and Microsoft hosted a hackathon to explore its possibilities. Initial experiments showed promise but lacked scalability.
“We were encouraged by the early results, but the framework hallucinated when handling large volumes of COBOL. Like many other AI experiments, we were still waiting for a true breakthrough — and that has now come,” explains Michael.
Since then, Microsoft’s team has continued development using a new framework based on Semantic Kernel — with such convincing results that Microsoft decided to release the technology publicly.
Bankdata is owned by eight Danish banks, including Sydbank, Jyske Bank, and Ringkjøbing Landbobank. The company builds payment solutions, advisor systems, and customer channels, and employs 1,000 people at offices in Fredericia, Silkeborg, and Aarhus.
Contact
Press contact at Bankdata
Jens Refsgaard
t: +45 29 89 84 86
e: [email protected]