How Kiro AI Agents Accelerate Development — from Modernization to Cloud Migration Analysis

Shipping engineering work on time and within budget has become more challenging for developers. Kiro simplifies it with AI agents that assist throughout the entire process. From our perspective, Kiro is transforming how enterprises modernize legacy systems, accelerate innovation and deliver value to customers. 

By fundamentally transforming the software development lifecycle, Kiro is helping empower teams to transition from legacy systems to modern solutions in minutes instead of months. Changes like this are affecting not just how we develop, but also how we test, architect, and approach software development practices. 

Launching an AI-assisted transformation catalyst

Kiro acts as a transformation catalyst, reimagining the entire AI-assisted software development lifecycle (SDLC) through four key capabilities:

1. New architecture patterns: Transforms application structure by identifying reusable components and implementing modern architectural approaches that scale.
2. Application modernization: Evolves legacy systems to contemporary platforms rapidly with minimal risk.
3. Automated testing frameworks: Accelerates quality assurance and defect resolution while maintaining reliability.
4. Rapid defect resolution: Streamlines debugging and issue remediation that keeps projects moving forward.

Advancing from legacy to modern in minutes

Traditional modernization projects are complex, costly and high risk. For example, migrating a legacy Python application typically takes months and substantial resources. Kiro flips this paradigm. For example, we modernized a full-stack Python 3.7 application in under ten minutes — updating dependencies, patching security vulnerabilities and optimizing performance with minimal manual effort.

The value can be immediate and measurable, including:

• 87.5% time savings on report analysis and migration tasks*
• Thousands of hours freed across hundreds of reports and projects
• Cost savings from less hiring for modernization work

It’s not just about speed. It's about gaining the ability to tackle technical debt that organizations have put off for years because the traditional approach was too slow, expensive and high risk.

Accelerating cloud migration and assessment

Kiro's impact extends far beyond code modernization. Teams can leverage its functionality to build sophisticated tools for database modernization, cloud assessment and migration analysis. For example, a Kiro-powered PowerShell data collection tool has solved pre-cloud connectivity challenges, enabling the rapid assessment of hundreds of servers in minutes versus weeks.

Automated recommendation engines integrate real-time pricing data and generate comprehensive reports that empower fast and accurate migration strategies. When evaluating time saved by project category enhancements, traditionally one of the most time-intensive development activities, at Rackspace, we have experienced timeline compression from weeks to days or even hours. This acceleration transforms the speed with which organizations can respond to market demands and customer needs.

Building collective excellence through community

Success with AI-powered development isn't just about the technology; it's about creating an environment where teams learn, share and compound their capabilities over time. A comprehensive center of excellence approach includes:

Top-down leadership buy-in: When leadership sees documented, proven benefits, investment in AI enablement becomes strategic rather than experimental.

Open collaboration channels: Accessible forums for questions, concerns and real-time problem-solving break down silos and accelerate learning.

Shared knowledge libraries: Curated collections of best practices, prompt libraries, use cases and onboarding materials help eliminate redundant learning curves.

Continuous learning culture: High-cadence collaboration helps ensure blocks are resolved quickly, wins are celebrated and replicated, and lessons are learned to inform future work.

This ecosystem approach means that when someone begins a new modernization project, they can immediately access relevant examples, reuse proven libraries and build on past experiences. The 80% time savings that AI enables expands to 85%, then 90%, as organizational knowledge compounds, based on internal work at Rackspace. Individual productivity gains are expected to become collective transformation.

Accelerating workflow enterprise-wide

Kiro integrates into daily development workflows across planning, coding, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Agentic capabilities enable parallel workflows, persistent data sharing across teams, and agile, data-driven development practices. Teams operate at a pace and scale that fundamentally changes what’s possible — not just for individual projects, but for entire work portfolios.

With 31-plus active projects deployed globally within Rackspace, the pattern is clear: organizations that embed AI deeply into their development practices don't just work faster; they work smarter. They build institutional knowledge that makes every subsequent project more efficient than the last.

Delivering compounding strategic advantages

The real differentiator isn’t the AI itself. It’s what becomes possible when AI-driven automation combines with deep technical expertise and battle-tested processes. Faster migrations translate to accelerated time-to-market. More accurate assessments mean better architectural decisions and optimized cloud spending. Higher quality outcomes reduce post-migration issues and technical debt.

Modernization transforms from a risky and expensive endeavor that organizations avoid into a strategic capability they can leverage for competitive advantage. As one Rackspace cloud specialist observed, “It doesn't just enhance my work. It has transformed our entire team of developers and the functions they perform. Individual growth is important, but collective excellence is unstoppable.”

Enterprise adoption is scaling rapidly through controlled expansion and rigorous outcome tracking. Each project informs business case development, validates best practices and identifies new opportunities for AI integration. As new agents are developed and embedded more deeply into development workflows, the compounding effect accelerates.

Advancing the AI agent transformation path

The AI agent journey centers on three imperatives:

1. Driving measurable real-world impact
2. Capturing and sharing organizational knowledge
3. Continuously evolving both technology and strategy for an AI-powered future

Kiro represents more than an AI tool. It's a blueprint for SDLC transformation that any enterprise can adopt. Organizations can shift from viewing AI as a productivity enhancement to recognizing it as a transformation platform — enabling rapid modernization, changing how software gets built and fostering continuous learning through community-driven excellence.

We're not just developing better software faster. We're rethinking what’s possible when human expertise and AI capabilities collaborate seamlessly, creating value that compounds exponentially over time rather than diminishing as the novelty fades. The question isn't whether AI will change software development for everyone; it's whether your organization will lead that change or follow it.

Learn more in our Kiro demo video.