As experienced members of the workforce retire, organizations lose critical system knowledge at the same time their environments become more complex. This challenge is especially acute in mainframe modernization initiatives, where deep, experience-based knowledge of legacy systems remains essential. Mainframe and hybrid systems continue to expand across platforms, but the expertise required to manage and modernize them is becoming harder to access and scale.

As a result, CIOs must recognize the operational fragility, including slower resolution and higher downtime, that this lag causes. The true barriers to innovation here are a lack of context and accessibility. As complexity grows and expertise becomes less accessible, organizations must move from reactive, knowledge-dependent troubleshooting to a model built on system-driven, explainable intelligence. 

From guesswork to guided intelligence: The rise of agentic operations

The way teams troubleshoot hasn’t kept pace with innovation. Diagnosing and resolving issues still depends on fragmented tools and knowledge that lives in the heads of a few individuals. Even in organizations actively pursuing mainframe modernization, limited visibility and inconsistent workflows slow teams down, forcing them to rely on who remembers what rather than what the system can clearly explain.

Conversational AI for IT operations is a system that enables engineers to query infrastructure in natural language and receive real-time, context-aware diagnostics along with recommendations that can be converted into human-in-the-loop agentic actions generated from correlated logs and performance data. Instead of digging through logs or relying on undocumented expertise, teams can interact directly with their systems and receive clear, contextual answers. This marks a novel shift toward proactive operations, where emerging risks are surfaced early and addressed before they become disruptions. 

Mainframe modernization without rip-and-replace

Modernization doesn’t require abandoning the systems that power the business. For many organizations, platforms like the mainframe remain essential, supporting everything from financial transactions to core customer experiences. A rip-and-replace approach often overlooks the proven reliability and performance these systems continue to deliver, not to mention the healthy degree of risk it introduces to the system. 

A more effective path is building incrementally on existing investments while introducing new capabilities that make them easier to operate and optimize. Traditionally, troubleshooting has been manual and reactive, requiring teams to navigate fragmented tools, correlate logs, and rely on individual expertise to diagnose issues. Currently, when something breaks, engineers have to connect the dots manually or rely on a single source of truth who “knows the system,” but this is inconsistent and stress-inducing. 

With the emergence of agentic AI for operations, IT teams can put boots on the ground inside the system itself. A user can ask something like, “Why is this application slowing down?” and it springs into action by looking across your systems from the mainframe to the cloud and connecting related events to identify what caused the issue. From there, the model can explain it to the user in plain English and suggest what to do next. 

What explainable troubleshooting actually looks like 

Explainable troubleshooting is the ability of an AI system to diagnose issues and clearly communicate the underlying cause, as well as recommend actions in plain language based on transparent analysis of system data across mainframe, COBOL, and hybrid environments.

This approach comes to life through Rocket EVA,  an AI-powered, agentic platform that delivers precise, end-to-end operational diagnostics across core systems. EVA connects system behavior across the full stack, giving teams the context needed to safely modernize without disrupting critical operations.

In the context of COBOL modernization, EVA reduces reliance on scarce subject matter experts by making application behavior, dependencies, and system interactions visible and understandable. By analyzing signals across multiple operational domains and connecting information that would otherwise require manual investigation across teams, it helps organizations identify root causes faster and significantly reduce mean time to resolution. For mainframe modernization, EVA enables teams to operate hybrid environments with greater confidence, bridging the gap between legacy systems and modern observability practices while providing a unified view of what’s happening across the enterprise.

Key capabilities

• Cross-platform observability (mainframe, COBOL, hybrid cloud, distributed systems) 





• Automated log correlation and event analysis across legacy and modern environments 





• AI-driven root cause analysis for mainframe workloads 





• Natural language interaction and diagnostics for faster troubleshooting 





• Continuous anomaly detection and pattern recognition across modernization pipelines 

Outcomes

• Reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR) in complex legacy environments 





• Improved root cause accuracy across mainframe systems 





• Decreased reliance on tribal knowledge during modernization initiatives 





• Increased operational resilience and uptime for hybrid systems 





• Faster onboarding of engineers unfamiliar with legacy platforms 





• Greater visibility into mainframe and legacy system dependencies

Why CIOs should care 

Technologies like these can serve both as solutions to problems and as tools to enhance the present strengths of your organizational processes. If IT teams spend less time diagnosing issues and more time resolving them, reducing downtime while easing dependence on a shrinking pool of specialized talent, organizations as a whole will benefit from increased resilience and workforce scalability. Just as important, systems become active participants in problem solving, making expertise broadly accessible. Simply put, the systems that endure will be the ones that can think alongside the people who run them. 

Learn more about how Rocket Software can meet you at any point on your modernization journey with EVA.