Datalex's AI & AWS Leap: Modernizing Airline Retail

Accelerating Legacy Modernization with AI

The Datalex modernization story on AWS is a compelling case study for tackling legacy system transformation. The core innovation lies in the strategic application of AWS Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) and agentic AI, not just as buzzwords, but as tangible tools that demonstrably de-risked and accelerated a complex migration. The ability to refactor a substantial Java/EJB2 monolith into Spring Boot microservices within a three-day workshop, leveraging AI coding assistants like Kiro and Amazon Q Developer, is particularly impressive. This approach highlights a crucial shift from monolithic rebuilds to incremental, feasible modernization, validating the existing business logic while embracing modern architectures and AI capabilities. The detailed breakdown of the four parallel workstreams – microservice prototyping, DevSecOps, QA/observability, and agentic AI PoC – provides a clear blueprint for organizations facing similar challenges, emphasizing a pragmatic, results-driven methodology.

Key Points

• Datalex modernized its mission-critical airline retailing system using AWS Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) and agentic AI.
• A three-day EBA workshop successfully demonstrated the feasibility of migrating from Java 8/EJB2 to Spring/Java 21, significantly accelerating the modernization process.
• Agentic AI tools like Kiro and AWS Transform Custom, alongside Amazon Q Developer, were instrumental in automating code transformation and refactoring.
• The modernization focused on an incremental approach using a business service proxy and the Strangler Fig pattern to avoid disruption to existing airline operations.
• Key technical shifts included moving to Spring Boot microservices, containerization with Amazon ECS Fargate, and building a robust, security-integrated CI/CD pipeline.
• Enhanced observability with Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, and CloudWatch Synthetics provides real-time system insights.
• Generative AI capabilities were integrated via Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, enabling natural language interfaces for booking retrieval through specialized agents.

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📖 Source: Accelerating airline retailing innovation: how Datalex modernized with AWS Experience-Based Acceleration and agentic AI