Golden Path Digital has launched AS/Forward, an automated transpilation platform designed to address the critical workforce shortage facing organizations that rely on IBM i systems. The platform provides a solution to what the company calls the "Workforce Cliff," where the average RPG developer is now 55 or older, creating a systemic threat to organizations that depend on these legacy systems for mission-critical operations in banking, logistics, and manufacturing.
The platform emphasizes "Codebase Clarity" as a foundational phase, performing deep dependency mapping and impact analysis to uncover hidden relationships within legacy codebases that may have been forgotten over decades of iterative updates. This intelligence-first approach generates automated, natural-language documentation and audit-ready descriptions of business logic, providing IT leadership with comprehensive visibility into their entire estate before any code migration begins.
A key feature of AS/Forward is its ability to convert legacy RPG into modern programming languages including Python, Java, Node.js, JavaScript, C#, and .NET. This multi-language flexibility allows organizations to break their reliance on dwindling RPG specialists and instead hire from the global talent pools skilled in modern web and cloud frameworks. The transition enables integration with modern DevOps practices, cloud-native architectures, and AI-driven development workflows, creating more agile IT environments capable of responding to market changes rapidly.
The platform employs an incremental modernization approach rather than requiring total system replacement, allowing organizations to migrate program-by-program at their own pace. This methodology reduces business interruption risk to near zero while providing a clear path to full modernization, contrasting with traditional "Big Bang" modernization projects that often take five to seven years and frequently fail to deliver results.
Financially, AS/Forward represents a significant departure from traditional consulting models. While manual code rewrites typically cost between $5 million and $20 million per project, the automated platform delivers cost reductions of 10x to 50x compared to these legacy approaches. Implementation timelines are similarly compressed, with organizations achieving modernization goals within 12 to 24 months rather than the multi-year commitments required by manual rearchitecting.
For regulated industries like banking, insurance, and healthcare, the platform's architecture is designed to be completely provider-agnostic. Organizations can choose to run the engine locally via Ollama or within secure private cloud environments like AWS Bedrock, ensuring sensitive proprietary logic and customer data never leave client firewalls. This design maintains local control over the migration process and protects core intellectual property from external exposure.
The platform represents a paradigm shift in enterprise approach to IBM i legacy systems, moving the industry away from high-stakes, multi-year projects toward strategic control and operational clarity. As the window for controlled transition narrows due to the aging workforce, this technology provides organizations with tools to secure their operational future while preserving decades of institutional business logic that might otherwise be lost when veteran developers retire.
