MongoDB has launched a new AI-driven application modernization platform called AMP, designed to help enterprises transform legacy applications into modern, scalable services that support AI and automation.
Legacy applications often accumulate technical debt, such as outdated code, architecture, and dependencies, which are costly to maintain and hinder integration of AI or agentic systems, according to Shilpa Kolhar, SVP of product and engineering at MongoDB.
The hindrance to moving to automated systems could mean that enterprises start falling behind their competition, Kolhar said, adding that the company’s modernization platform tries to bypass this challenge for enterprises.
Components of the platform
The new platform will offer a dedicated team of engineers, spread globally, who will oversee and guide enterprises through the entire transformation process, including deployment.
A typical modernization journey for an enterprise at MongoDB, according to Kolhar, will include a consulting process that will include discussions on expected pricing, and after that, the AI-driven platform will be used to conduct tests for existing applications, creating a baseline that captures how legacy systems behave in production.
“This upfront investment in testing becomes the foundation for everything that follows, providing guardrails that ensure modernized code performs identically to the original while giving teams the confidence to make changes without fear of breaking critical business processes,” Kolhar said.
The entire process will get completed through a testing-transformation-trial-deployment loop, Kolhar added.
Devin Dickerson, principal analyst at Forrester, termed this hybrid approach of using an AI-assisted platform along with engineers is “holistic.”
“Most of the AI-assisted developer tooling in the marketplace today works best for net-new applications,” Dickerson said.
MongoDB’s AMP offers the best of both worlds by combining human engineers with AI, as some vendors offer automated tooling and no human layer, while others offer only a human-layer but not AI-driven tooling, said Rachel Stephens, research director at RedMonk.
“Enterprise modernization has traditionally relied on system integrators (SIs) or other outside consultants. These projects tend to be highly manual, making them slow and expensive. It’s not uncommon for these engagements to stall before delivering real results,” Stephens explained, adding that MongoDB’s AMP lowers the risk of modernization while maintaining the desired pace.
Differentiated from rivals
MongoDB, according to analysts, stands out from rivals due to its positioning of the data layer at the core of its offerings.
“MongoDB’s data-layer-out transformation approach makes sense for many legacy applications where the data layer will present the biggest challenge to the overall modernization,” Dickerson said.
The analyst also pointed out that some of the rivals offer tools that are known to drive vendor lock-in, and enterprises that want a cloud platform agnostic approach may find MongoDB’s approach suitable for their needs.
MongoDB claims that its customers, including Bendigo Bank and Lombard Odier, have seen gains up to 10x on tasks like code transformation on the use of the platform.
The platform is expected to start picking up even more pace once it completes more modernizations, MongoDB said. The NoSQL document database provider has not clarified the list of legacy code and databases it currently supports for modernization, but Kolhar said that the company plans to “mindfully and gradually” expand the types of legacy code it can modernize.