The $1 Trillion Global Mainframe Problem: Why 2025 Is the Year of Visual Extraction

The $1 trillion global mainframe problem isn't a hardware issue; it's a cognitive load crisis. For decades, the world’s most critical infrastructure—banking cores, insurance claims engines, and government records—has been trapped in "black box" systems where the original authors have long since retired, leaving behind millions of lines of undocumented COBOL, RPG, or monolithic Java.

The industry standard response has been the "Big Bang" rewrite. It is a strategy that fails 70% of the time. We are currently witnessing a $3.6 trillion global technical debt bubble that is about to burst because the traditional methods of "code archaeology" cannot keep pace with the demand for digital transformation.

TL;DR: Visual extraction bypasses the high-risk "archaeology phase" of modernization by using video as the source of truth, reducing migration timelines from 18 months to mere weeks.

The Archaeology Trap: Why 67% of Systems Are Unmapped#

The primary bottleneck in legacy modernization isn't writing the new code; it's understanding the old code. Statistics show that 67% of legacy systems lack any form of usable documentation. When an Enterprise Architect is tasked with modernizing a 30-year-old claims processing system, they aren't just coding—they are performing forensic science.

Manual reverse engineering is a grueling process. On average, it takes a senior developer 40 hours to manually document, map, and replicate a single complex legacy screen and its underlying business logic. In a system with 500 screens, that is 20,000 man-hours before a single line of production-ready modern code is even written.

The Cost of Doing Nothing#

Every year an enterprise waits to modernize, their technical debt compounds. The cost of maintaining these systems is no longer just the licensing fees; it's the "opportunity cost" of being unable to integrate with AI, deploy to the edge, or meet modern compliance standards.

💰 ROI Insight: Companies using Replay reduce the time spent on manual screen documentation from 40 hours to just 4 hours per screen—a 90% reduction in discovery overhead.

Comparing Modernization Strategies#

The industry has tried various flavors of modernization, yet the failure rate remains stubbornly high. The "Big Bang" approach is essentially a multi-year bet that the business requirements won't change while you're building—a bet most companies lose.

Visual Reverse Engineering: The Death of the "Black Box"#

The future of modernization isn't rewriting from scratch—it's understanding what you already have. Replay introduces a paradigm shift: Video as the source of truth.

Instead of digging through millions of lines of spaghetti code to find the business logic for a specific tax calculation, you simply record a real user performing that workflow. Replay’s AI Automation Suite then decomposes that video into its constituent parts: the UI components, the state changes, the API contracts, and the business rules.

From Pixels to React Components#

Replay doesn't just take a screenshot. It performs a deep structural analysis of the workflow. It identifies patterns and generates documented React components that match the functional requirements of the legacy system but utilize modern, accessible code standards.

typescript
// Example: Replay-generated component from a legacy terminal recording
// Preserves business logic while modernizing the stack to React/Tailwind

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { Button, Input, Card } from '@/components/ui';

interface LegacyClaimData {
  claimId: string;
  policyNumber: string;
  adjustmentValue: number;
}

export const ModernizedClaimForm: React.FC<{ initialId: string }> = ({ initialId }) => {
  const [data, setData] = useState<LegacyClaimData | null>(null);
  const [loading, setLoading] = useState(true);

  // Business logic extracted from legacy workflow:
  // Rule 1: Adjustment cannot exceed 15% of policy value
  // Rule 2: Claims over $5k require manual supervisor override
  const validateAdjustment = (value: number) => {
    return value <= 5000; 
  };

  return (
    <Card className="p-6 shadow-lg">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold mb-4">Claim Adjustment Portal</h2>
      <div className="grid grid-cols-2 gap-4">
        <Input 
          label="Policy Number" 
          value={data?.policyNumber} 
          disabled 
        />
        <Input 
          label="Adjustment Amount" 
          type="number"
          onChange={(e) => {/* logic extracted from Replay Blueprint */}}
        />
      </div>
      <Button className="mt-4" disabled={!validateAdjustment(data?.adjustmentValue || 0)}>
        Submit for Review
      </Button>
    </Card>
  );
};

⚠️ Warning: Attempting to modernize without first establishing a visual "Source of Truth" often leads to "Feature Drift," where the new system fails to handle the edge cases the legacy system solved decades ago.

The Replay Workflow: From Recording to Production#

Modernization with Replay follows a structured, high-velocity path that eliminates the 18-month "wait and see" period typical of enterprise projects.

Step 1: Visual Capture (The Recording)#

A subject matter expert (SME) records their screen while performing standard business operations in the legacy environment. Replay captures every interaction, state change, and data input. This becomes the "Blueprint."

Step 2: Decomposition and Audit#

Replay’s engine analyzes the recording. It identifies reusable UI patterns for your Library (Design System) and maps the sequence of events into Flows (Architecture). Simultaneously, it performs a Technical Debt Audit, highlighting which parts of the workflow are redundant or contain "dead" logic.

Step 3: Generation of API Contracts#

One of the hardest parts of legacy migration is the "glue code." Replay automatically generates API contracts (Swagger/OpenAPI) based on the data observed during the visual extraction.

yaml
# Generated API Contract from Replay Visual Extraction
openapi: 3.0.0
info:
  title: Legacy Claims API
  version: 1.0.0
paths:
  /v1/claims/adjust:
    post:
      summary: Extracted from "Adjust Claim" workflow
      parameters:
        - name: claimId
          in: query
          required: true
          schema:
            type: string
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Success
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/AdjustmentResponse'

Step 4: Export and Integration#

The final output is a set of documented React components, E2E tests (Cypress/Playwright), and technical documentation. This isn't "black box" code—it's clean, maintainable, and ready for your CI/CD pipeline.

Why Regulated Industries Are Moving to Visual Extraction#

For Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government, the risk of a "failed rewrite" isn't just financial—it's a matter of compliance and public trust. These industries cannot afford the downtime or data loss associated with traditional migration.

• •Financial Services: Modernizing core banking screens while maintaining SOC2 and PCI compliance. Replay offers On-Premise deployment to ensure sensitive data never leaves the secure perimeter.
• •Healthcare: HIPAA-ready extraction of patient record systems. Replay preserves the complex validation logic required for medical billing without exposing PII during the extraction process.
• •Manufacturing/Telecom: Turning green-screen terminal workflows into mobile-responsive React applications for field technicians in days, not years.

💡 Pro Tip: Use Replay’s "Blueprints" to create a living documentation library. Even if you aren't ready to migrate the entire system today, documenting your workflows visually prevents further knowledge loss as senior staff retire.

Challenging the "Code-First" Mentality#

The biggest mistake Enterprise Architects make is thinking that modernization starts in the IDE. It doesn't. Modernization starts in the user's browser (or terminal).

The $1 trillion problem exists because we have prioritized the "how" (the code) over the "what" (the business value). When you focus on the code, you get bogged down in technical debt and legacy syntax. When you focus on the visual workflow, you capture the actual business requirements as they exist in the real world.

Replay allows you to skip the "Archaeology Phase" entirely. We don't care how the COBOL is structured; we care about the logic it executes and the value it provides to the user. By extracting that value visually, we reduce the modernization timeline by an average of 70%.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take with Replay?#

A typical enterprise screen that would take 40 hours to manually document and prototype can be processed in approximately 4 hours using Replay. Entire sub-systems can be mapped and ready for development in 2-8 weeks, compared to the 18-24 months required for traditional rewrites.

What about business logic preservation?#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite identifies state changes and data transformations during the recording. These are mapped into "Blueprints," which serve as the functional requirements for the generated code. This ensures that complex "hidden" logic—like specific tax calculations or validation rules—is preserved in the modern version.

Does Replay require access to our source code?#

No. Replay is a visual reverse engineering platform. It works by observing the application's behavior and output. This makes it ideal for systems where the source code is lost, obfuscated, or too complex to parse through traditional static analysis.

Is Replay secure for highly regulated environments?#

Yes. Replay is built for the enterprise. We offer SOC2 compliance, HIPAA-ready configurations, and the option for full On-Premise deployment to ensure that your data and intellectual property remain within your controlled environment.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.