GitHub Copilot Takes on Legacy App Modernization
Microsoft’s AI coding assistant can now upgrade Java and .NET apps, making cloud migration faster and easier for developers.
GitHub’s AI coding assistant is taking on app modernization, helping developers complete in days what once took far longer. Microsoft is rolling out new capabilities that automate Java and .NET upgrades, as well as convert legacy applications to run on Azure.
The update to GitHub Copilot is part of a larger announcement in which Microsoft is also debuting other agentic AI tools to help enterprise firms digitally transform their apps into cloud-based ones.
“For decades, developers have been toiling with manual, time-consuming, and complex modernization efforts. This is part of the technical debt that has grown inside every business,” Amanda Silver, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for its developer division, tells me. “Outdated software means increased security risks, decreased performance, and a challenge to manage. But the biggest challenge is that when developers are stuck cleaning up the past, they can’t concentrate on the real innovation—and can’t make space to build what’s next.”
Before today, migrating apps to the cloud required significant time, energy, and resources that companies may not have readily available. Legacy apps needed to be analyzed to identify any dependencies before developers could modify the code to make it cloud-ready, and then manually test it to ensure it worked properly. And then, there were more steps needed before the app could be launched. Silver states that this approach could take “months or even years to complete,” mainly due to technical debt and the scarcity of available experts.
Microsoft thinks generative AI can accelerate this process.
GitHub Copilot Transforms Java and .NET Apps
With GitHub Copilot, developers can instruct the AI agent to upgrade their app’s software, as long as it’s programmed in Java or .NET. It will not only analyze the codebase and detect any breaking changes, but the bot will also recommend safe migration paths, implement appropriate build fixes, check for any common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE), and test validations.
Silver shares that Microsoft used GitHub Copilot for this exact purpose. Its Xbox team wanted to upgrade its Xbox Presence service—the system that tells you which games you and your friends are playing—from .NET 6 to .NET 8. The AI agent automatically generated a plan that accounted for all the dependencies and made the necessary changes through a step-by-step process. “Minimal manual intervention was required while developers remained in control throughout,” she claims. “As a result, the team accelerated the modernization workflow and reduced migration effort by 88 percent.”
GitHub Copilot will help upgrade Java and .NET apps to the latest programming language versions, such as .NET 10 and Java 21.
Should developers want to migrate these apps to run on Azure, Microsoft says GitHub Copilot can assist with that. The company is announcing that Java app modernization within the AI agent is now generally available. It’s also launching .NET app modernization in public preview, which includes cloud migration and .NET Framework-to-Core upgrade. First introduced at Microsoft Build this year, app modernization will evaluate apps to prepare them for cloud readiness. To ensure the app runs on Azure, it’ll update the code, review dependencies, and adjust deployment configurations.
Updates to Azure Migrate
Besides the GitHub Copilot enhancements, Microsoft is introducing new capabilities to Azure Migrate, a service to help enterprise customers assess the viability of migrating to its cloud platform.
What’s new with Azure Migrate?
New agentic capabilities in private preview that make migration easier, providing a guided experience, automation of key tasks, and building on what teams already know
Connection with GitHub Copilot, also in private preview
Enablement of application awareness by default, available in public preview. This provides developers with a comprehensive view of their entire portfolio, offering more profound insight into the apps.
Added support for PostgreSQL, popular Linux distributions, and other databases and infrastructures
“Azure Migrate helps organizations reduce technical debt by migrating and modernizing infrastructure, apps, and data, giving organizations the broad coverage to address the entire IT estate and the deep visibility into each application,” Silver remarks. “But it also goes beyond tools; it’s about helping teams—IT, developers, data, and security—move faster and make smarter decisions throughout their migration and modernization process.”
She cites pharmaceutical giant Sanofi as one case study for Azure Migrate. The drugmaker used the service to transition 2,500 workloads to the Azure cloud platform. Typically, it would take at least six months to complete this migration, but Microsoft boasts that Sanofi was able to deploy “a fully qualified landing zone in hours.”
“The ability to migrate applications was one of the most important and urgent requests, especially as customers look to migrate and modernize their entire IT estate, not just individual workloads,” Silver reveals. “Every business is wrestling with decades of technical debt, outdated infrastructure, databases, and applications. In fact, IDC reported that organizations estimate over 37 percent of their application portfolios require modernization today, and that number will remain high over the next three years.”
She notes that maintaining and updating legacy systems drains resources and talent that could be better spent on innovation. For her, the real case for modernization isn’t just staying current—it’s unlocking AI capabilities that can add new value to the business-critical apps powering global enterprises. That, Silver says, is the driving force behind today’s announcements.