As IBM i soon celebrates its 35th year of continuous service, a paradox emerges: the platform remains one of the market’s most stable, yet RPG/COBOL experts are retiring faster than they can be replaced. A sobering reality according to the IBM i Marketplace Survey 2025, 60 % of CIOs now rank the IBM i skills shortage among their top two concerns, second only to cybersecurity.
In this context, modernization is no longer a luxury but the prerequisite for evolving critical applications without relying on an ever-shrinking technical talent pool. Although AS/400, iSeries, and IBM i applications still drive key processes, their 5250 interfaces and delivery cycles fall outside DevOps and cloud-native practices.
Business units demand real-time APIs, AI-ready data streams, SaaS options… all requirements far easier to meet in a standardized .NET ecosystem.
Our answer: a unique formula
AUMERIAL + FokkerNetwork combine their expertise to offer you comprehensive support, designed to secure your application assets and prepare your IT environment for modern standards. Rather than enforcing a turnkey migration, our approach starts with a joint assessment: reviewing your RPG/COBOL developments, mapping business challenges, and co-defining a roadmap.
A comprehensive, coherent offering, backed by a team of experts, to progressively adopt current market standards while ensuring the longevity, maintainability, and scalability of your existing systems with technology choices built to last.
Leverage your legacy code.
Since 2016, about 70 % of IBM i users surveyed by Fortra report running between 51 % and 100 % of their business applications on this platform, with 43 % running over 75 % of their application portfolio on IBM i, meaning the functional assets to protect are considerable.
Rather than completely rewriting your RPG/COBOL modules, our approach focuses on reusing your legacy code and giving it new life. We collaborate to define the best way to convert your existing code into reusable .NET components—packaged as assemblies, exposed as services, or containerized. A simple deployment on Linux, Windows, or Docker lets your modules retain their original logic while becoming portable .NET services.
You transition from a legacy monolith to an agile, cross-platform microservices ecosystem, ready to integrate with new web, mobile, or cloud-native applications.
Integrate .NET at the heart of your information system
The rise of .NET/C# on IBM i reflects a natural evolution of architectures: while RPG and SQL remain dominant, language diversity is growing, and .NET/C# now ranks among the most acclaimed languages. This hybridization leverages modern free-form RPG’s ability to call external services, while paving the way for more agile use cases.
.NET now attracts 25 % of developers worldwide and relies on modern tools: Visual Studio for development, NuGet for package management, and CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment. You get a unified framework to design REST APIs, orchestrate microservices, and leverage cloud capabilities (Azure, AWS), while ensuring maintainability and performance.
Our services cover auditing your IBM i environment, strategic consulting, and the gradual transformation of your modules into .NET services. We address hybrid architecture, bespoke development, performance optimization, and operational support. With our dual expertise, .NET becomes the backbone of your IT system: a unified, scalable, and agile technical foundation designed to endure and meet your company’s evolving needs.
Application maintenance (TMA) and bespoke support.
And the financial gains are tangible: the Forrester TEI study, commissioned by IBM, estimates an average ROI of +191% for an IBM i modernization project, with a payback period of under six months.
To preserve stability and support your IT system’s continuous evolution, opt for dedicated TMA tailored to your priorities and pace. By entrusting daily monitoring, proactive handling of change requests, and rapid incident response to our IBM i/.NET specialists, you ensure clearly defined and controlled service levels.
Financially, maximizing the reuse of your existing code significantly reduces maintenance effort, while evolution and modernization vouchers help smooth out the initial investment. With our offering, you benefit from continuous guidance, cost control, and a gradual ramp-up, without major risks to your operations.
Don’t let the skills shortage hinder your growth. Safeguard your IBM i assets and embrace today’s and tomorrow’s standards to supercharge your business applications!
AUMERIAL + FokkerNetwork
👉 Contact us today to learn more.
Visual: excerpt from “2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey Results,” Fortra, April 2025. Data source: Fortra Research (© Fortra 2025).