Case Study: Cognizant achieves 50% faster cloud migration planning with CAST Highlight

Cognizant cuts cloud migration planning in half with CAST Highlight

Cognizant, a global professional services firm, was asked to help a client migrate a massive portfolio of apps to AWS and to go beyond simple rehosting by quickly identifying which applications should be modernized, retired, or replaced. With over 2,000 apps in scope and a VP-directed deadline of under three months to rationalize the landscape, Cognizant needed a fast, accurate way to assess cloud readiness, technical debt, and open‑source risks across hundreds of diverse, custom applications.

Using CAST Highlight to automatically analyze application source code and combine those objective insights with custom survey data, Cognizant completed cloud-migration planning for 633 apps in 12 weeks—about 50% faster than a manual approach that would have taken six-plus months. The engagement produced disposition recommendations and modernization effort estimates for every app, identified 50 apps with lower-cost alternatives, targeted 8% of the portfolio for retirement and one app for SaaS replacement, and uncovered specific code blockers to be removed.

Cognizant