Accelerating Enterprise Software Delivery with Watsonx Code Assistant
A global financial services enterprise needed to modernize and scale its legacy applications while reducing development bottlenecks. With business teams demanding faster feature releases, regulatory updates, and improved system reliability, traditional development practices became too slow and costly.
By implementing IBM Watsonx Code Assistant with Nexright, the organization built an AI-augmented engineering ecosystem that accelerates development velocity, reduces errors, supports large-scale code modernization, and enhances cross-team productivity.
Business challenge
The organization managed a large portfolio of legacy applications written across COBOL, Java, and .NET systems. Years of incremental updates resulted in technical debt, inconsistent coding standards, and low automation.
This complexity slowed the organization’s ability to ship updates, respond to market changes, and meet regulatory timelines. Manual code reviews and lack of documentation further increased risks, especially for mission-critical services.
Key Challenges:
- Over-extended development cycles caused by manual coding and review processes.
- High technical debt across aging applications such as COBOL and monolithic Java services.
- Limited documentation for legacy codebases, making onboarding slow and risky.
- Difficulty modernizing applications for cloud environments due to outdated architectures.
- Quality and security inconsistencies, requiring more robust automated checks.
The enterprise needed a scalable, AI-powered development solution that improves engineering efficiency, reduces modernization time, and supports secure deployment of new capabilities.
Solution
Partnering with Nexright, the organization deployed Watsonx Code Assistant to support modernization and day-to-day engineering workflows across multiple development teams.
The AI platform provides automated code generation, transformation, documentation, and testing capabilities — enabling engineers to accelerate delivery without compromising quality or compliance.
Solution Highlights:
- AI-Generated Code & Automation
Developers use Watsonx Code Assistant to generate boilerplate, rewrite complex functions, and automate repetitive tasks, improving delivery speed across teams. - Legacy Modernization Accelerator
Automated refactoring of legacy COBOL and Java applications into cloud-ready architectures reduced modernization time and engineering effort. - Context-Aware Code Recommendations
The model analyzes project structures, coding patterns, and business rules to provide accurate, secure recommendations aligned with organizational standards. - Integrated Security & Compliance
Automated detection of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and non-compliant patterns ensures that quality and regulatory requirements are consistently met. - Developer Upskilling & Enablement
Teams gain a self-service AI assistant that helps junior engineers become productive faster and senior engineers focus on high-value design work.
Solution components
- IBM Watsonx Code Assistant
- Watsonx.ai for training and fine-tuning domain-specific models
- IBM Cloud Pak® for AIOps (optional integration for code-to-production observability)
Automated Code Generation
Accelerates development by generating accurate functions, APIs, configuration files, and unit tests that follow enterprise coding guidelines.
AI-Driven Legacy Modernization
Refactors monolithic or outdated codebases into modular, cloud-ready components while preserving business logic and reducing human error.
Secure Engineering by Design
Identifies vulnerabilities and suggests fixes before code reaches production, improving compliance with financial and regulatory frameworks.
Result
- Reduced development time by up to 45%, accelerating feature delivery and regulatory update cycles.
- Decreased modernization effort by 60% for legacy applications using automated code transformation.
- Improved code quality and security through AI-driven review and automated vulnerability detection.
- Enhanced developer productivity, freeing senior engineers to focus on architecture and innovation.
- Faster onboarding of new developers with AI-generated documentation and guided assistance.
Watsonx Code Assistant dramatically reduced our modernization timelines and boosted our engineering productivity. With Nexright’s guidance, we now ship updates faster, improve code quality, and maintain compliance with far less manual effort.
— Head of Engineering Transformation, Global Financial Enterprise