What is your primary objective as a technology leader?
Reduce the technical debt and achieve higher operational performance, isn’t it?
Organizations that migrated from AS400 to cloud platforms have experienced an average cost reduction of 40%, with lowered maintenance and operational expenses.
~ According to a study by Forrester Consulting.
76% of respondents reported that cost saving is the primary driver for AS400 migration.
~ According to a survey by Fresche Solutions.
Well, we agree that it’s not always the cost that bothers technology leaders to take that plunge – AS400 migration to cloud.
But would you agree with the benefits that AS400 cloud migration brings up besides improving operational efficiency?
“What benefits are we discussing?” – you may ask.
- Access to modern technologies
- Advanced security and compliance
- Improved scalability and performance
- An opportunity to futureproof your technological ecosystem
The list is long enough though, but we believe the glimpses are good enough for you to get started, aren’t they?
Still have the question clouds bothering you, whether to take that plunge or not?
Still uncertain about IBM i application migration to cloud? Thinking if you should take that leap or not?
Here are some more numbers, that will certainly push you to act upon the AS400 migration to cloud –
A company achieved a 1000% improvement in scalability with a 70% reduction in the batch processing time with AS400 migration to cloud.
~ According to a Case Study by Microsoft Azure
81% of respondents reported improved performance & scalability after migrating from AS400.
~ According to a survey by Fresche Solutions.
57% of organizations viewed accessing new technologies as a top motivator for AS400 migration.
~ According to a report by International Data Corporation(IDC)
We believe this motivates you to unleash the lasting effect that AS400 migration will leave on the way you operate.
By the time you reach the end of this read, you’ll have gained insights into –
- Challenges of AS400 to cloud migration
- Preferred approaches for AS400 migration
- Key things you must know amidst AS400 to cloud migration
- Benefits of IBM i application migration
Ready to understand how to begin your journey for a successful AS400 cloud migration?
Without any further ado, let’s dive in!
What are the Challenges Involved in AS400 to Cloud Migration?
Did you know?
59% of respondents plan to upgrade hardware, software, or both in 2025.
Most customers who plan to upgrade both hardware and software prefer to tackle both projects simultaneously.
10% of respondents plan to stay on IBM i but move to the cloud, which can serve as another means of upgrading hardware and software.
~ As per 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey by Fortra.
Where do you stand as a CTO on the decision of cloud adoption?
Well, no matter if you are prioritizing AS400 migration to cloud this year or not, it won’t be harmful to know the challenges you may face during the migration process.
Let’s dive into the challenges, straight!
Hidden Application Dependencies
It’s quintessential to understand the deep dependencies between AS400 applications, databases, and services before you proceed with AS400 to cloud migration.
Ignore a single dependency and you AS400 migration initiative may start to tank! It’s like an open invitation to failure!
Realize, your legacy applications are not built for the cloud. And that’s what makes their behavior post-migration a bit predictable.
If you wish to make your AS400 cloud migration a success – having a plan is the only game. Map out the dependencies clearly, spot the performance bottlenecks & security cracks.
A thorough assessment of your AS400 ecosystem is a must to ensure an effortless transformation from on-premises to cloud, with low-to-no disruption and operational continuity.
Architectural Compatibility Gaps
Here’s a fact – Not all clouds are built the same, and neither are AS400 systems.
A single mismatch in the infrastructure, security procedures and integration frameworks can invite serious operational concerns.
The complexity of legacy infrastructures often entangles with the flexibility of cloud environments. And this leads to performance bottlenecks and unanticipated downtimes.
A strategic approach to AS400 to cloud migration undertakes these risks, beforehand. It includes a well-devised architectural alignment even in the new cloud environment, ensuring a seamless IBM i application migration to cloud.
Scarcity of Skilled IBM i Professionals
As per the latest 2025 IBM i Marketplace Survey, by Fortra – 60% of IBM i users surveyed reported IBM i talent as the top concern.
It’s a timely eye-opener for AS400 users that the workforce that built AS400 and maintained it for over 3 decades is now on the verge to walk out of the door. They are retiring.
And, shrinking AS400 talent pool is a real concern.
AS400 to cloud migration demands balanced a skillset – AS400 expertise and cloud proficiency. If you lack either of these skillsets your AS400 migration may be bothered by delays, misconfiguration, or costly errors.
You need a team of AS400 experts who understand the nitty-gritties of legacy systems and modern cloud environments. This ensures a well-planned migration with minimized risks.
Data Recovery Complexities
AS400 migration to cloud isn’t about shifting workloads to the cloud – it’s more about securing the mission-critical data & improving accessibility to the same.
A single misstep may invite data corruption troubles, data loss, and extended downtime.
As you plan for IBM i applications migration to cloud, you must also focus on getting a disaster recovery strategy in place.
In absence of a time-tested backup and recovery procedure, operational continuity after disaster could take longer than expected. A calculative approach to data integrity and data redundancy proves instrumental in tackling these risks.
Challenges with Legacy Databases
AS400 databases were designed decades ago, with complex, hierarchical relationships that don’t naturally translate to cloud-native structures.
We must all agree that AS400 databases were built based on needs of time. The complexity, hierarchy, and relationships these databases possess can’t be translated to the cloud environment. It would certainly need structural adjustments.
Moving ahead with AS400 migration without optimizing these databases may lead to integration failures, and unanticipated system downtime.
This one mistake might completely derail the performance of your AS400 applications, post AS400 to cloud migration.
To avoid such an unambiguous situation, it’s ideal to have a rock-solid database modernization strategy in place. This ensures that you refactor schemas, optimize queries, and restructure dependencies in time, enabling seamless cloud compatibility.
Next, let’s look at the preferred approaches to AS400 migration.
What are Preferred Approaches for AS400 Cloud Migration?
For several mid and large businesses, AS400 has been a preferred choice to run mission-critical ERPs to streamline business operations.
As business expands and emerging technologies disrupt various processes, enterprises are exploring ways to reduce the cost of supporting and maintaining AS400 applications.
This is coupled with the need to –
- Gain clear visibility into how IT impacts the business
- Enable faster application delivery
- Reduce manual effort
This is driving enterprises to consider AS400 migration initiatives to significantly improve system agility, scalability, and operational efficiencies. And this is one of the key reasons, there is an ever-increasing demand to modernize, migrate and integrate AS400 applications.
AS400 cloud migration is a broad term that is used to deploy- the portfolios of AS400 applications -on the cloud to reduce cost and increase scalability, without any modifications.
Depending upon the business objectives, it could comprise migration of the batch jobs to the cloud for optimal use of all business systems. After migration to open-source databases, you can integrate multiple cross-platform or cloud-based applications and leverage your existing AS400 operational data.
AS400 Migration to SQL server or to any other advanced database will help several businesses regain large volumes of valuable information and leverage core business logic. SQL server is an open-source platform, which enables small applications to run independently or along with ERPs.
IBM i application migration to cloud could be challenging due to its monolithic code that has been developed over decades.
Several organizations lack a detailed understanding of AS400 applications and related batch jobs. In addition, their in-house knowledge is often limited, and these subject matter experts (SMEs) are not well-versed with AS400 to cloud migration best practices.
To ensure business continuity and sustainability, it’s recommended to carefully evaluate AS400 cloud migration initiative on factors such as desirability, feasibility, and viability.
There cannot be an ideal or proscribed approach for AS400 migrations, as it varies from business to business depending upon the desired goal.
The common approach for migration is to keep old and new systems in sync using hybrid cloud architecture and ensure that end-to-end processes are not broken.
Additionally, large amounts of data can be cleansed, transformed, and migrated to the cloud in a secure manner.
Now, let’s look at the two most popular approaches to AS400 to cloud migration.
Re-Hosting – Most Opted AS400 Cloud Migration Approach
Rehosting is one of the AS400 cloud migration approaches as existing interfaces or functionalities are kept unchanged. It is highly advisable to identify a remediation plan before migration.
Rehosting is also known as Lift and Shift approach for AS400 migration.
It includes moving existing AS400 applications and data to the cloud environment without making any major changes to the design, function, and procedures.
Rehosting incorporates exhaustive testing to ensure that the applications perform at capacity within the new, unused cloud environment.
The best leverage that you get with the rehosting approach is that, in any case, the AS400 migration won’t disrupt the current application portfolio. The reason is low-to-no changes in the applications and data.
Re-Engineer – Comprehensive Approach to AS400 Cloud Migration
The re-engineer approach to AS400 cloud migration diversly differs than that of re-hosting approach to AS400 migration.
This approach involves a complete overhaul of the AS400 application, interfaces, design, user interface architecture, and scalability.
When we say a complete overhaul, it doesn’t point to the fact that we discard and rebuilt the system from scratch. Rather, the focus is on making it more compatible with changing business needs and making it future proof.
This helps AS400 applications and processes access cloud-native workloads for future-proof architecture.
This AS400 cloud migration approach is recommended when existing AS400 applications are failing to meet evolving business demands.
Next, let’s understand the benefits AS400 cloud migration has to offer.
What are the Key Benefits of AS400 Cloud Migration?
What do you think of when we say benefits of AS400 migration to cloud?
Enhanced scalability?
Resource availability?
Modern-day integrations?
AS400 cloud migration has multifaceted benefits to offer.
Let’s look at some immediate benefits you can claim!
Improved Resource Scalability
Legacy systems worked on rigid infrastructures, making it difficult to scale resources up and down, as per changing business needs.
If you opted over-provisioning, you stood a chance of wasting extra costs.
If you opted under-provisions, you had a risk of performance bottlenecks.
With IBM i application migration to cloud you can scale AS400 workloads, based on changing business needs.
No performance decline. No hardware constraints. No cost burns.
Isn’t that fascinating?
Our AS400 experts help you configure auto-scaling, so you scale up during peak demand and scale down to save costs—maximizing efficiency while keeping IT spending predictable.
Reduced Maintenance Costs
Managing on-prem AS400 infrastructure is labor-intensive, draining IT teams with endless maintenance, patches, and hardware upgrades. These manual efforts shift focus away from strategic initiatives.
Managing an on-premises infrastructure is a labor-intensive task. It burns both energy and cost.
No matter how much you spend on maintenance, patch fixes, and upgrades – it’s all temporary and you need a permanent fix.
AS400 migration to cloud offers you the resolve you need. It eliminates this operational strain by offloading system upkeep to cloud providers.
Our AS400 experts help you attain smooth transitions, reducing downtime and freeing up your IT teams to focus on innovation, not maintenance.
Access to Modern-Day Technologies
Sticking to traditional AS400 environments limits your ability to leverage AI, machine learning, or advanced analytics—leaving innovation off the table.
Higher reliance on legacy tools may cause struggle for you to stay competitive.
AS400 migration unlocks next-gen capabilities by integrating AI-driven insights, IoT, and big data analytics into core operations.
Our IBM i cloud migration experts help you adopt cloud-native solutions, ensuring your AS400 ecosystem thrives in a data-driven world.
Strengthened Security Posture
Legacy AS400 security frameworks aren’t built to counter modern cyber threats, leaving vulnerabilities in data access, encryption, and compliance.
We both must agree on this – legacy AS400 security procedures aren’t potent enough to battle modern-day cyber threats.
If the argument must continue, you must own the responsibility for the vulnerabilities in data access, encryption, and compliance.
Realize, a single data breach could cost you millions in penalties and reputational damage.
AS400 to cloud migration brings enterprise-grade security, including zero-trust architectures, automated threat detection, and robust encryption.
Our team of IBM i specialists help fortify security layers, ensuring continuous compliance with industry regulations (PCI, GDPR, HIPAA) while minimizing cybersecurity risks.
Enhanced Disaster Recovery Capabilities
On-premises AS400 disaster recovery depends on costly secondary sites and complex manual backups, making recovery slow and unreliable.
Downtime in critical business applications leads to financial burns.
Cloud-driven disaster recovery ensures real-time backups and instant failover mechanisms to minimize business disruptions.
Our IBM i migration experts configure automated recovery solutions, reducing downtime risks and securing data integrity.
Improved Accessibility & Collaboration
Traditional AS400 environments tie operations to fixed infrastructure, making remote work and global collaboration difficult.
Limited accessibility slows business agility.
AS400 to cloud migration breaks these limitations, enabling anytime, anywhere access to AS400 applications.
Our AS400 experts integrate secure access controls, ensuring remote teams collaborate seamlessly without compromising security.
Seamless Integration with Modern Applications
Legacy AS400 applications struggle to connect with modern CRMs, ERPs, and cloud-native services, leading to disconnected workflows and inefficiencies.
AS400 cloud migration enables seamless API-driven integrations, connecting IBM i applications with modern ecosystems.
Our AS400 integration specialists develop custom APIs, ensuring AS400 seamlessly interacts with cloud-based solutions, enabling agility, automation, and cross-platform connectivity.
Cost-Efficiency
Maintaining AS400 infrastructure demands high capital investment in hardware, licensing, and on-prem security.
AS400 cloud migration shifts costs to a pay-as-you-go model, eliminating hardware expenses while optimizing resource utilization.
Our IBM i experts ensure cost-efficient cloud adoption. So that you pay only for what you use.
Increased Agility
Deploying new features on legacy AS400 platforms is slow and cumbersome, delaying time-to-market.
You need a faster, adaptable approach to stay ahead of your competitors.
AS400 migration to cloud enables rapid deployment cycles, allowing IT teams to launch applications in days instead of months.
Our AS400 experts design scalable, agile environments, helping you respond to market shifts faster while keeping innovation at the forefront.
Up next, let’s understand about the key factors you need to know about before you begin with AS400 migration.
What You Must Know before AS400 Migration to Cloud?
AS400 migration is a transformative step.
As a CTO, you would want it to be transformative and not disruptive.
Thinking, “Why would AS400 cloud migration be disruptive?”
There are multiple complexities and nitty-gritty involved in the process itself.
Before you commit to it, it’s quintessential to have established a clear understanding of these factors.
Thinking, “What are these factors affecting the success of AS400 migration?”
Let’s look at these crucial factors, one-by-one!
Thorough Knowledge of AS400 Systems
This may sound obvious, but before you begin your AS400 to cloud migration initiative, having an out-and-out understanding of your AS400 system and overall architecture is a must! And, precisely, it deserves mention!
Your AS400 system is a combination of hardware components, an operating system, AS400 applications, and the function they perform altogether.
A comprehensive understanding of the AS400 system configuration, interfaces, and applications offers you a better perspective before you make the decision of AS400 migration.
Expectation off AS400 Cloud Migration Initiative
Right before you jump into the AS400 migration activities, it is essential to understand what you are trying to achieve through it.
It’s quintessential to outline a clear objective for AS400 migration to cloud.
You must have answers for –
- Why this change?
- What is supposed to undergo change?
- How do we plan to cope with the change?
- How beneficial do you think the AS400 migration will be if it proves to be detrimental to the financial outcome?
An in-depth pre and post-ROI analysis of the AS400 cloud migration gives you a better picture of the business revenue and the impact of the improvisation.
Data Quality & Duplication
AS400 cloud migration can be an invitation for data theft if done wrong!
The legacy data stored on your on-premises system might not be fully compatible with the new cloud environment, amidst AS400 migration.
Importing wrong or duplicated data can ruin the whole process of AS400 migration to cloud and make the data messier.
A data quality check is a scrutiny multilayer that involves performing quality checks, data clean-up, elimination of replicated data, etc., all with the objective of shipping only clean data to the new environment.
This step ensures the optimal state of your data and facilitates a seamless AS400 cloud migration.
Besides that, data is critical for any type of legacy migration. Encryption of sensitive information is important for secure data access, storage, and retrieval processes.
AS400 migration is a dynamic process, so encrypting information both on disk and in the cloud is paramount.
Existing IBM i Integrations
To cater to modern-day business requirements, business leaders like you often implement modern solutions in the nature of third-party integrations.
Now, when you opt for IBM i application migration to cloud environment, chances are that the integrations might falter.
There are primarily two reasons for this –
1st – The new system in the cloud environment might not inherit the integrations previously enabled.
Solution – Be prepared for this situation, beforehand. You must have a clear plan of action on the modern integrations that you need in the new environment, and the modifications needed in the new system environment.
2nd – The new system environment might already support the features that needed third-party integrations in the prior setup.
Solution – In this case, you need to have a clear understanding of the changes taking place with the AS400 migration to cloud. This will help you avoid redundancy with the integrations.
System Documentation
The importance of AS400 system documentation cannot be overemphasized.
A detailed record of all system components, policies and procedures, system architecture, data model diagrams, network configuration, etc. is important for AS400 cloud migration because system documentation is not part of the original SDLC.
Risk Assessment
AS400 cloud migration proves game-changer, no matter the shape & size of the business.
It’s important to be ready for the change, right before you move your IBM i application to the cloud – a new environment.
AS400 migration is going to boost the performance and scalability of your AS400 systems. But, at the same time, you must understand the functional and operational changes that the cloud environment is going to bring up.
Risk assessment is a non-negotiable in this process as it gives you a clearer picture of what remains the same and what changes.
This includes awareness and measures to close the security gaps that exist in your current system.
A process such as revamping the code base of your AS400 system would exponentially increase the impact of such vulnerabilities. Thus, your team of AS400 experts must be aware of architectural vulnerabilities before AS400 to cloud migration.
Data & Application Backup
Don’t lose the backup of your legacy AS400 system, even if you have begun with your AS400 migration initiative.
Why? – you may ask.
Having a backup offers you a cushion to rely on if the cloud initiative fails to propel.
You can always roll back to the old environment.
Though it’s not the case with proven AS400 cloud migration strategies. Still, it gives you and the team of AS400 experts the confidence to act fearlessly on the cloud initiative.
AS400 Migration Company of Your Choice – Integrative Systems
Looking for a reliable AS400 migration company to help you with AS400 to cloud migration?
Your search ends here with Integrative Systems!
We understand that a migration approach that worked for a particular organization may not necessarily work for your business. We focus on finding the best-fit solution to help you achieve your cloud migration goals.
Our seasoned team of AS400 experts helps you with cost assessments and feasibility frameworks for migrating your mission-critical applications to cloud environment with no-to-low disruption and operational friction.
AS400 migration is a promising solution that saves you a considerable amount of operational costs and improves the performance of your AS400 applications.
If you are looking for AS400 experts who can help you knock out the challenges of AS400 migration with optimum cost-savings, we will help you achieve that. Feel free to share your requirements at [email protected].
Frequently Asked Questions about AS400 Migration to Cloud
1. Why Should Businesses Consider Migrating AS400 Applications to the Cloud?
Ans. IBM i application migration to cloud offers benefits such as improved performance, cost savings, enhanced security, and the ability to integrate with modern technologies, thereby future-proofing enterprise operations.
2. What Challenges Might Arise During AS400 Cloud Migration?
Ans. AS400 migration challenges include data compatibility issues, system downtime risks, and the need for specialized expertise to ensure a seamless transition without disrupting business continuity.
3. How can Businesses Overcome Challenges in IBM i Application Migration to the Cloud?
Ans. By conducting thorough assessments, defining clear objectives, and partnering with experienced AS400 migration companies, businesses can mitigate risks and ensure a successful AS400 to cloud migration.
4. What Role do AS400 Experts Play in the Migration Process?
Ans. AS400 experts provide invaluable insights, develop strategic migration plans, and offer technical support, ensuring that the migration aligns with business goals and minimizes potential disruptions.
5. What are the Steps Involved in AS400 Migration to the Cloud?
Ans. The process typically includes initial assessment, planning, execution, and post-migration support. Each phase is meticulously designed to ensure data integrity and system functionality.
