When SYNON customers face the reality that their platform is aging, they usually think they have two choices:
- Keep SYNON forever (and accept permanent technical debt)
- Leave IBM i for a modern cloud platform (and rebuild everything)
Both options feel bad. So they often choose option 2, even though it’s the wrong decision.
Here’s what they don’t see: there’s a third option that’s cheaper, faster, and lower-risk than either alternative.
Why Cloud Migration Looks Attractive (And Why It Fails)
When you’re managing a SYNON application and facing hiring challenges, technical debt, and the inability to integrate with modern tools, cloud migration feels like the escape hatch. The pitch is always the same: “Move to the cloud. Rebuild in Java or Python. Use modern frameworks. Everything becomes easier.”
Numerically, companies estimate cloud migration will cost $500,000–$1,000,000 for application rebuild, $5,000–$10,000 per month for new hosting, and $50,000–$100,000 for training and transition, totaling $600,000–$1.2M upfront plus $60,000–$120,000 per year. That estimate is fiction. Cloud migration actually costs $1,200,000–$2,500,000 for application rebuild (because “modern code” requires more infrastructure than the original budget accounted for), $15,000–$30,000 per month for hosting including hidden costs for redundancy, backups, monitoring, and security, $200,000–$500,000 in hidden rework when bugs get discovered in testing, $100,000–$200,000 for training and transition, and $30,000–$50,000 per month for 6–12 months of parallel running. Add emergency fixes after go-live ($50,000–$100,000) and the total reaches $2,000,000–$4,000,000 upfront plus $180,000–$360,000 per year. And that’s the optimistic case.
Most companies also discover, 6–12 months into the cloud rebuild, that they’ve forgotten about some critical piece of business logic that wasn’t in the original specification. Now they’re reworking the new application to handle edge cases that worked fine in SYNON.
The result: 2–3 years of disruption, $3–5M in costs, and a new system that’s more expensive to operate than the original IBM i infrastructure.
Why? Because cloud-native applications require different architectural thinking. You’re not just converting code; you’re rebuilding the entire operational model.
Why IBM i + Modernized RPG Free Form Is Better
Here’s what actually happens when a SYNON customer modernizes on IBM i instead:
What companies actually pay:
- Convert SYNON to RPG Free Form: $150,000–$300,000
- Modernize database schema to SQL/DDL: $30,000–$60,000
- Implement CI/CD pipeline and modern DevOps integration: $40,000–$80,000
- Team training on modern RPG and DevOps practices: $20,000–$40,000
- Total: $240,000–$480,000 (one-time)
Annual operating costs:
- IBM i infrastructure (Power Systems or cloud IBM i): $30,000–$60,000/year (unchanged from before)
- Plus: ability to integrate with modern tools, attract younger talent, and evolve the applications incrementally
Timeline: 4–6 months from start to production (versus 18–36 months for cloud migration)
Risk: Low (you’re modernizing existing code, not rebuilding)
Business continuity: Minimal disruption (applications keep running while modernization happens in parallel)
The comparison isn’t even close.
Why IBM i Is Actually the Right Platform (For This Use Case)
Is IBM i a good platform in 2026? Yes. Unambiguously. IBM i has 99.99%+ uptime in production environments. Cloud platforms have similar uptime in theory, but operational complexity is higher. You need more people to manage cloud infrastructure than IBM i requires. For high-volume transaction processing like orders, claims, inventory, and billing, IBM i systems cost 40–60% less to operate than equivalent cloud deployments because IBM i is optimized for exactly this workload.
IBM i’s security model is built in rather than bolted on, which matters for regulated industries in finance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals where audit and compliance requirements are simpler on IBM i than on cloud platforms requiring extensive configuration. IBM continues to invest in IBM i—it’s not a legacy platform being slowly deprecated but a core part of IBM’s enterprise strategy with annual OS updates, new features, and continued hardware evolution. A single IBM i partition with 20–30 developers is manageable by a small team, whereas an equivalent cloud application might require a dedicated DevOps team just keeping the infrastructure running.
The companies that are doing well in 2026 accepted a simple premise: “IBM i is good for what we do. Let’s modernize the code, not abandon the platform.”
The Strategic Decision
For a SYNON customer in 2026, the decision tree is simple:
If you leave IBM i:
- You’re betting that cloud-native development is worth 3–5 years of disruption and $3–5M in costs
- You’re assuming you can rebuild everything perfectly from scratch
- You’re accepting higher ongoing operational complexity
- You’re gaining “modernness” but losing the proven, stable platform
If you stay on IBM i and modernize:
- You’re investing $250K–$500K in code modernization
- You’re staying on a platform that works, is proven, and is cost-effective
- You’re attracting talent by offering RPG Free Form (a modern language) running on a stable platform
- You’re integrating with modern DevOps tools without reimplementing your entire application architecture
- You’re reducing technical debt while maintaining business continuity
The second option is strategically stronger for 95% of SYNON customers.
What Success Looks Like
A company that modernizes SYNON to RPG Free Form on IBM i looks like this in 18 months:
- SYNON applications are converted to clean, readable RPG Free Form code
- Database schema has been modernized to SQL/DDL where appropriate
- CI/CD pipeline is integrated (Git, Jenkins, automated testing)
- Younger developers are joining the team and learning the modernized applications
- Integration with modern API layers and cloud services is possible
- Maintenance costs have dropped 20–30%
- Hiring success rate for junior developers has improved 3–5x
- The applications are positioned for another 20 years of evolution
That’s not “legacy” anymore. That’s a modern, managed, strategically positioned application portfolio.
The Honest Assessment
Modernizing SYNON on IBM i is not sexy. Nobody writes case studies about “We stayed on our existing platform and upgraded the code.”
But it’s the right answer for most companies.
The companies making the news are the ones doing cloud migrations and big-bang rewrites because those are dramatic narratives. They make good LinkedIn posts.
The companies doing well are the ones making boring, pragmatic decisions: understand where you are, understand where you want to go, and pick the path that gets there fastest and cheapest.
For SYNON customers, that path is clear: modernize on IBM i.
If you’re managing SYNON applications and wondering whether staying on IBM i is the right call for your organization, let’s talk. We’ll help you think through the strategic options and build a modernization approach that positions your applications for success in the long term.