Government agencies facing an increasing mandate to move from legacy mainframe systems. The solution, generative AI. Now, agencies no longer need to fear the tradeoff between migration risk and the opportunity available in the cloud. In this case study featured on the AWS Public Sector Blog, our Karsun experts share their experience accelerating modernization with AI.

This case study features Karsun Solutions’ ReDuX AI powered migration and modernization platform. It offers a compelling approach for enterprises considering mainframe migration. Sharing their experience modernizing legacy applications for one of our government customers, this case study demonstrates what happens when modern AI tools meet modern software development practices. 

Deep Insights Using Amazon Bedrock

ReDuX is designed to tackle typical obstacles in mainframe modernization, such as undocumented business rules, technical complexities, and regulatory compliance. Its approach is inspired by Karsun’s decade and a half modernizing complex enterprise systems for the federal government. ReDuX utilizes generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) powered by Amazon Bedrock to analyze and understand legacy systems. 

Using Bedrock the Karsun team accessed high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies via a single API. Building their ReDuX platform on top of the resources provided by Bedrock, our team created an AI powered toolkit for identifying and mapping the complex business rules and processes embedded within mainframe applications. This facilitates a smoother transition to modern architectures. Further, by providing a structured approach, ReDuX reduces risks associated with legacy system modernization.

Matching AI with Modern Microservices Architecture

In the case study, we share how using our AI powered platform, we enabled our government customer to migrate from monolithic mainframe systems to microservices-based architectures on AWS. This shift enhances scalability, flexibility, and maintainability of applications, aligning with modern IT strategies. 

It also allowed our team to focus on security and privacy. Recognizing the importance of enterprise-grade security and privacy, especially in government and regulated industries, the platform incorporates robust measures to protect sensitive data during and after the migration process. ​

Furthermore, migration to the cloud enables secure-by-design architecture. Using AI powered tools, like those available on the ReDuX AI platform, lets our agency customers access the benefits of the cloud while reducing migration risks. Written in a modern language, it alleviates workforce concerns and eliminates long-term maintenance issues arising from the aging, dwindling population familiar with COBOL and other outdated languages.

By demonstrating a successful implementation of generative advanced AI technologies and cloud services to migrate and modernize legacy systems, this case study from our team offers valuable insights. It presents a potential roadmap for organizations seeking to undertake similar modernization initiatives. Head over to the AWS Public Sector blog for deeper insights on AI-driven modernization and a technical breakdown of our solution.

We recently announced that we were appraised at CMMI Level 5 DEV for a third time. This maturity appraisal comes from ISACA, a global professional association focused on governance of enterprise IT, and represents the highest maturity level in that organization’s CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) framework.

Few companies meet the requirements for CMMI Level 5 Dev and we’re honored to appraise at this level three times. We’re proud to deliver quality consistently at the highest levels. Artificial intelligence, AI, powers the statistical and quantitative techniques used to meet our performance objectives.

In fact, in 2024 experts from our Karsun Innovation Center spoke at the ISACA CMMI Conference. At this conference, they presented a case study from one of our teams supporting a government agency customer. This team used AI tools included in our ReDuX AI platform to enhance efficiency while creating production ready code at a rate faster than if human teams produced that code on their own. 

To better understand how AI can drive these process improvements, we share some insights from their talk below. For deeper insights on AI, development and modernization, Discover How ReDuX AI Works. 

The Case for AI Powered Process Improvement

We presented this real-world case study at the annual CMMI conference in Phoenix, Arizona in 2024. CMMI appraisals were originally designed to help the Department of Defense understand its process. Today organizations around the world now seek out CMMI assessments. Karsun’s software development methodology is appraised at the highest tier for software development appraisals indicating we use a data driven process to analyze, assess and continually improve our practices.

The story begins in the Karsun Innovation Center. This center houses the Karsun research and development unit responsible for prototyping and integrating emerging technology and connecting our team members with industry technology leaders and experts. Part of the work of the Innovation Center includes building toolkits, playbooks and other resources. 

That includes an agile platform we built called GoLean that’s used by our software development teams. Using this platform, we tracked performance data, made adjustments, and observed the impact of our process improvements using dashboards and other tools to gain insights. Using the tools in this platform our teams compared incremental improvement to past performances, identified practices that were outliers from our average performance, and made adjustments to reduce the impact and risk of those outlier events. This approach to agile development resulted in our first two CMMI Level 5 DEV appraisals.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence opened up the door to truly optimize our practice. We began building AI tools that could handle very high dimensionality. In other words, the model used by the AI needed to handle data with many related factors. 

This allowed us to understand the relationship between processes and the impact of changes to those processes. We could now better assess moving certain processes to the left, testing new automation practices or adding new DevOps or CI/CD tools. We could now measure holistic improvement to more rapidly scale and drive improvements among our development teams enhancing our overall efficiency.

The Results: Elevating Efficiency with AI

This, when combined with other tools in our AI platform, boosted our team’s efficiency as they modernized a 30 year old mainframe system. With the use of AI, our team saw a 22.5% increase in productivity! What’s more, using AI, they developed reusable resources to further optimize our processes.

In addition to new and improved methods for measuring process improvement, our ability to deliver high quality code quickly was further improved by AI agents. From code generation to scalability templates, agentic AI introduced yet another opportunity to further enhance our efficiency. To uncover this part of our toolkit visit us at GoReDuX.AI.

Agile development is in our DNA. Now using AI to boost efficiency in government, we’re leading the pack with high quality software and modern enterprise systems to meet agency missions. 

Ready to partner with proven performers? Contact our team here to get started!

As a software developer/solutions architect, navigating the complexities of modernizing legacy applications requires more than just adopting new technologies. It demands a deep understanding of software design patterns that ensure scalable, resilient, and maintainable solutions. Unfortunately, in the rush to modernize, crucial design patterns are often overlooked, leading to technical debt, performance bottlenecks, and security vulnerabilities. This article explores key design patterns frequently ignored by modernization teams, the reasons they are neglected, and the consequences of bypassing them. By integrating these patterns into modernization strategies, developers and architects can build robust, future-proof applications that stand the test of evolving technological landscapes.

Strangler Fig Pattern

The Strangler Fig Pattern is a gradual migration strategy where new functionality is built around the existing legacy system, slowly replacing it until the old system is entirely phased out.

• Why it’s overlooked: Modernization teams often opt for a full rewrite rather than incremental refactoring, assuming that starting from scratch will be faster and more efficient. However, this can introduce significant risks and delays.
• Real-world example: A financial institution migrating from a monolithic COBOL-based mainframe to a microservices-based architecture used the Strangler Fig Pattern. They introduced an API layer that progressively handled more transactions while legacy components were retired incrementally.
• Consequence of ignoring it: A complete system rewrite without this pattern can lead to prolonged development times, business disruptions, and increased failure risks due to untested new implementations.
• When to use: Use this pattern when modernizing large, complex legacy applications that cannot afford extended downtime or complete overhauls at once.

Saga Pattern

The Saga Pattern manages distributed transactions by breaking them into a series of smaller, compensating transactions.

• Why it’s overlooked: Modernization teams often assume eventual consistency is automatically handled by microservices frameworks, neglecting explicit transactional workflows. Implementing sagas can be challenging due to the need for handling failures and maintaining consistency. Teams may opt for simpler orchestration mechanisms without considering the potential for distributed transaction failures.
• A real-world example: An online travel booking system had issues where partial failures left customers with incomplete reservations (e.g., flights booked but hotels not confirmed). Implementing the Saga Pattern ensured rollback mechanisms were in place, maintaining data consistency across services. 
• Consequence of ignoring it: Without the Saga Pattern, distributed systems suffer from data inconsistencies, orphaned transactions, and poor user experience. Distributed transactions can lead to inconsistencies if not handled properly. Failures in one service can impact the entire transaction.
• When to use: Use this pattern when dealing with distributed transactions involving multiple services that must maintain consistency and systems with complex business transactions that span multiple services.

Sidecar Pattern

The Sidecar Pattern runs auxiliary services in separate containers alongside main application services, enabling functionalities like logging, monitoring, and security without modifying the core application.

• Why It’s Overlooked: Modernization teams may prioritize core service development and neglect auxiliary concerns, leading to bloated application code.
• Real-World Example: A fintech company used the Sidecar Pattern to deploy a separate logging and monitoring service alongside each microservice, simplifying debugging and performance tracking.
• Consequence of Ignoring It: Neglecting this pattern leads to tightly coupled services, making maintenance difficult and increasing the complexity of scaling and updating auxiliary functions.
• When to Use: Use this pattern when microservices require independent functionalities like logging, monitoring, or security without modifying the core service logic.

Circuit Breaker Pattern

The Circuit Breaker Pattern prevents a system from continuously making requests to a failing service, reducing unnecessary load and enabling faster recovery.

• Why it’s overlooked: Modernization teams often assume cloud-native platforms handle failure gracefully, ignoring the need for explicit fault tolerance mechanisms.
• Real-world example: Netflix employs the Circuit Breaker Pattern to maintain high availability in its microservices architecture. If a particular service fails repeatedly, the circuit breaker trips and prevents further calls until recovery.
• Consequence of ignoring it: Without circuit breakers, cascading failures can occur, where a single failing microservice can bring down an entire system due to unhandled retries and excessive load.
• When to use: Use this pattern in distributed systems where service failures must be isolated to prevent widespread outages.

Bulkhead Pattern

The Bulkhead Pattern isolates different components or services so that failures in one do not impact the others.

• Why it’s overlooked: Many teams focus on horizontal scaling but neglect to compartmentalize workloads, making services susceptible to systemic failures.
• Real-world example: In e-commerce platforms, checkout, inventory, and recommendation services can be isolated using bulkheads to ensure that failure in one does not affect the others.
• Consequence of ignoring it: Ignoring this pattern can lead to entire systems going down due to a single point of failure, significantly impacting user experience and revenue.
• When to use: Use this pattern in microservices architectures where services must operate independently to ensure resilience.

Event Sourcing Pattern

The Event Sourcing Pattern stores changes to an application’s state as a sequence of immutable events rather than modifying records directly.

• Why it’s overlooked: Teams often prioritize relational database models and transactional consistency, overlooking event-driven architectures that enhance auditability and scalability.
• Real-world example: Uber uses event sourcing to track rides, payments, and user interactions, ensuring that every action is recorded as an event for consistency and debugging.
• Consequence of ignoring it: Not using event sourcing can lead to data inconsistencies, loss of historical data, and difficulties in troubleshooting and replaying past transactions.
• When to use: Use this pattern in applications requiring strong audit trails, historical tracking, and event-driven state management.

CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) Pattern

CQRS pattern separates read and write operations into different models, optimizing for performance and scalability.

• Why it’s overlooked: Many teams’ default to CRUD-based architectures without considering read-heavy or write-heavy optimizations.
• Real-world example: E-commerce platforms like Amazon use CQRS to manage inventory updates separately from customer queries, ensuring high performance under heavy loads.
• Consequence of ignoring it: Ignoring CQRS can lead to database contention, performance bottlenecks, and inefficient scaling strategies.
• When to use: Use CQRS in high-performance applications where read and write workloads differ significantly.

Repository Pattern

The Repository Pattern separates the business logic from data access, providing a clean abstraction layer between application logic and database queries.

• Why It’s Overlooked: Modern ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) frameworks promise simplified data management, leading teams to believe explicit repository layers are unnecessary.
• Real-World Example: A healthcare software provider initially used direct ORM calls within service classes. As the system scaled, database logic became scattered, leading to maintenance challenges. Refactoring to use the Repository Pattern improved code organization and maintainability.
• Consequence of Ignoring It: Ignoring this pattern leads to tightly coupled code, making it harder to switch databases, optimize queries, or maintain separation of concerns.
• When to Use: Use this pattern when dealing with complex domain logic that requires a clean separation between business rules and data access.

API Gateway Pattern

The API Gateway Pattern acts as a single entry point for all client requests, routing them to appropriate backend services while handling cross-cutting concerns like authentication, logging, and rate limiting.

• Why It’s Overlooked: Teams may assume direct client-to-microservice communication is sufficient, leading to complex client logic and inefficient network calls.
• Real-World Example: A streaming service adopted an API Gateway to handle authentication, request aggregation, and traffic management across various backend services, improving performance and security.
• Consequence of Ignoring It: Without an API Gateway, microservices architectures can become fragmented, increasing security risks, inconsistent data access, and complex client-side logic.
• When to Use: Use this pattern when managing multiple microservices and requiring centralized handling of security, authentication, and request routing.

Modernization efforts should not only focus on adopting new technologies but also on leveraging proven design patterns to ensure scalability, resilience, and maintainability. Patterns like Strangler Fig, Saga, Circuit Breaker, Bulkhead, Event Sourcing, Repository, Sidecar, and CQRS provide essential strategies to ensure a scalable, resilient, and maintainable architecture. By integrating these patterns into modernization efforts, teams can avoid common pitfalls, minimize risks, improve system reliability, and create robust solutions for the future.

A version of this blog was first posted by Karsun expert Lakshman Maruri. Lakshman is an expert in our aviation portfolio. Connect with him on LinkedIn. Our Karsun Cloud Solutions experts use tools like those available in our Cloud Runways and Microservices Toolkits to accelerate transformation and build resilient, scalable architecture. Learn more at https://karsun-llc.com/innovation-center/modernization-and-transformation-toolkits/cloud-runways/

Whether a state or local government, or a U.S. government agency, a major problem facing government and industry alike is their aging mainframe systems. A shrinking workforce with experience in older languages such as COBOL, limits the ability of organizations to maintain these legacy systems and prepare for the future. This was apparent as states like New Jersey, facing strain on their systems during the early days battling COVID, called for assistance with their COBOL systems.

Now as federal agencies seek new opportunities to introduce efficiencies via artificial intelligence (AI), these systems provide an easy target for modernization. AI with its ability to tackle complex, repetitive tasks accurately provides one solution to the government mainframe modernization challenge. 

To this end, our Karsun Innovation Center experts devoted their time to producing a complete suite of AI solutions dedicated to tackling the mainframe modernization challenge.

The COBOL Modernization Challenge

With their decades-old interconnected applications and systems, these legacy mainframe systems are complex, expensive to maintain, difficult to change, and vulnerable to attacks. At the same time, the cloud presents the opportunity to build secure, resilient systems that adapt to the changing needs of its users.

Past modernization and migration attempts appeared out of reach for these systems. Stymied by both the cost and time required to transform these systems. These high-value assets handling mission-critical workloads present a high stakes challenge for modernization teams. Often core to the business with large customer bases, they have vast complex functionality that must be broken down into smaller parts before proceeding. 

Karsun applied AI, speeding up this tedious task while ensuring modernization teams had a complete map of the legacy system. Using its ReDuX platform, Karsun limited the impact of poorly documented systems and unanticipated relationships between components. When integrated with the other tools available in the ReDuX platform, AI-assisted teams generated production ready code two times faster than when they used humans alone.

Further given this complexity, some organizations may decide to simply replatform the system. But AI gives us the opportunity to do more than lifting and shifting the application to the cloud. It empowers us to optimize with a product mindset. With this in mind we can build human centered systems that scale and adapt to a changing environment.

The Solution: AI for Mainframe Modernization

Enter ReDuX, Karsun’s AI-powered digital transformation platform. We built our platform using AI to accelerate modernization while reducing risk. Using Amazon Bedrock, a platform that provides access to AI tools via an API, Karsun built a comprehensive digital transformation platform. Karsun’s ReDuX provides AI-enhanced tools for modernization team members from designers to developers in a single platform.

Using generative AI, the platform creates a complete blueprint of a legacy system, reducing risk, and generates behavioral insights. Using this information business analysts, designers, and others do more than rewrite these legacy systems, they reimagine an optimized system designed to match the needs of its users.

This product oriented process is enhanced throughout the modernization effort via the platform’s digital transformation agents. Using agentic AI, the modernization team can chat with their code for deeper understanding and apply reusable templates using automations to rapidly scale their work while reducing risk.

ReDux is already in use by the Karsun teams delivering large-scaled complex modernization solutions to our federal agency customers. We recently shared our experience on the AWS Public Sector Blog.  To learn more about AI Solutions for government modernization visit us here: https://karsun-llc.com/solutions/artificial-intelligence-ai-solutions/

Stuck with a difficult modernization challenge? Check out GoReDuX.AI and get unstuck today!

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Enterprise Modernization Experts! Today, we’re sending our love to the designers, developers, and data engineers who deliver excellence to our government customers and the American people. Driving this performance are the dedicated teams diving into the latest technology solutions. Among those cutting edge solutions are these digital transformation trends we love here at Karsun Solutions.

Designing with a Product Mindset

The Product Mindset empowers teams as they design applications in a way that adapts to the ever-changing digital landscape. As we enter a period requiring adaptability and a forward-thinking approach, the Product Mindset asks teams to consider how the system will be used now and in the future and how they can introduce efficiency now while building to scale. 

This mindset emphasizes moving from a “building” to a “dwelling” perspective. This focuses the process on continuous design as a form of continuous improvement. That includes modeling user experiences, using modern platforms, and implementing layered designs. Learn how Karsun does this with our Digital Transformation Toolkit in this white paper from the Karsun Innovation Center.

https://karsun-llc.com/resource/design-for-every-next-2/

Generative AI for Human-Centered Design

Another key digital transformation component is human-centered design (HCD.) This approach centers design using practices that identify whether the product matches the expectations of its human users. This is achieved by building in continuous feedback and using practices that assist product teams as they identify whether design supports or hinders users.

While human-centered design brings humanity back to software development, it also helps teams ensure the product is used as intended. It uses tools, like those built with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), to process user data and generate new insights. From these behavioral insights business analysts and others can more quickly generate requirements to ensure functionality carries over to the new systems built by the product team. 

As a final process improvement and efficiency-boosting feature, systems using Generative AI learn from the best practices of the development teams using these tools. When well integrated into platforms like Karsun’s ReDuX AI, the team may use AI to identify the practices that best help achieve their product goals. Based on these insights, the team can add guard rails, further engineer their model, or use agentic AI to generate code, templates, and other resources in line with those recommendations.

Zero Trust Architecture Boosted by Security-Led Practices

When using zero trust architecture (ZTA), systems continuously validate every interaction with the system. Using this approach, teams build systems that limit the ability of people and devices to access it, assuming that by default, they are not to be trusted. Zero trust best practices are essential when building secure architecture designed to adapt to changing needs and evolving threats. The ZTA approach includes well-architected practices. It also includes integrating emerging technologies. 

When teams use security-led practices, such as zero trust architecture and well-architected principles, they can now use AI to enhance their capabilities. That includes using predictive AI to identify risks and generative AI (GenAI) to address those hazards. Teams using our ReDuX AI-powered digital transformation engine use GenAI to proactively recommend best practices, generate guard rails based on established policies, and build templates so they can scale their practices more effectively. 

At Karsun, we design large-scale government IT solutions that enhance the capabilities of our agency partners and drive performance. Our commitment to solid digital transformation and design practices is part of our enduring commitment to technology solutions for every next. Our experts deliver these robust enterprise solutions at agencies across the federal government. At the same time, our innovators explore, prototype, and implement the latest technologies as part of delivering truly transformative solutions. If any of these trends pique your interest, we invite you to connect with our Karsun Innovation Center team and discover how you can begin your technology journey.

With National Data Privacy Week upon us, we reflect on the shifting data environment. From concerns surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) to an evolving threat environment, there is as great a need as ever to be mindful in our approach to protecting data. Our Karsun Innovation Center experts have met this challenge producing new solutions to address future requirements.

Our teams have a long history of incorporating emerging technologies into our data solutions. We build data platforms that produce meaningful insight while protecting sensitive data. Whether that occurs through machine learning (ML) for business intelligence or incorporating well-architected practices into our data-led migration. Moreover, many of these novel solutions incorporate machine learning and AI to further enhance data privacy. 

Utilizing Synthetic Data

Synthetic data enables enterprise data teams to innovate securely. This data is produced through machine learning using models that learn the patterns, structures, and relationships within the real dataset. Next, artificial, or synthetic, data is produced with similar statistical properties to the original data set. Thus, this process masks sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII).

By providing high-quality datasets that mirror real-world data without exposing this data, synthetic data minimizes privacy risks, supports compliance with regulations like HIPAA, and reduces the impact of data breaches. Meanwhile, by allowing safe data sharing and model training, synthetic data accelerates AI and analytics development while ensuring ethical data practices, making it a powerful tool for balancing privacy and innovation. Introducing strong synthetic data practices can be one of the steps organizations can take to prepare their data for an AI-enhanced future. 

Security Automation

We can apply both predictive AI and generative AI (GenAI) and enhance organizations’ security posture by strengthening their security automation. While predictive AI identifies threats, GenAI creates new pathways to addressing security concerns. GenAI is particularly well suited to automating security. When incorporated into an AI-powered platform, it enhances safety culture by applying guardrails, best practice policies, templates, and automations that proactively address security concerns. GenAI further enhances security through its self-healing mechanisms that assess threats and then incorporate those assessments into its policy recommendations.   

GenAI to Meet Regulatory Requirements

GenAI also offers significant potential for meeting regulatory requirements as modernization teams migrate legacy systems. We have written about this extensively on the ReDuX website. ReDuX is our AI-powered platform that accelerates mainframe modernization. One component of that platform is a mapping feature that builds a blueprint of the legacy system. With an enhanced understanding of the legacy system, the team avoids security pitfalls, identifying functional code while removing dangerous dead code and reducing the risks and errors. Moreover, using a platform with built resources allows teams to introduce guardrails like those used to improve security automation.

Bringing It Together

Consider then a data project where each of these methodologies is included as part of a robust data practice. First, synthetic data is produced using machine learning. When combined with AI-assisted development, like that used by ReDuX, the security automation guardrails enforced by the AI-powered platform ensure proper security tools and practices, including those applied to synthetic data, are used properly every time. Then, as AI practices evolve, they are refined further.  

AI/ML helps technology teams navigate complex regulatory landscapes, including compliance with standards like HIPAA, FISMA, and GDPR, to ensure data privacy and system security. By adopting an AI-enhanced approach, agencies can protect privacy, overcome regulatory challenges, and maintain secure and resilient applications to align with their data goals. To learn more about emerging technology from the Innovation Center, visit our Projects Page or take the first step on your data modernization journey and connect with us on our Data Solutions Page. 

At a time when the tech industry is rapidly evolving and competition for top talent is fierce, Karsun Solutions is making significant strides in creating a workplace that not only attracts top professionals but also nurtures their growth and innovation. Its growing accolades for its workplace, growth, and innovation reflect the company’s unwavering commitment to fostering a people-first culture that prioritizes employee satisfaction and development.

Celebrating A Regional, National and Industry-Wide Culture Leader

Karsun picked up new Top Workplaces awards for culture over the course of this year. Rankings on these regional, national, and Culture Excellence lists are determined based on anonymous surveys filled out by employees, conducted by third-party research firm Energage. In total, Karsun received 12 Top Workplace awards in 2024. These include awards for teams in the Washington, D.C., and Oklahoma City regions, for its remote teams, and for cultures that promote Innovation, Purpose and Values, Work-Life Flexibility, Employee Appreciation, and more.

As Karsun now appears on some lists for the third year in a row, these Top Workplaces awards are indicative of genuine sentiments within the organization. Energage, which administers these surveys, focuses on key aspects like alignment, execution, and connection. Karsun’s inclusion in this esteemed list underscores the company’s success in these areas, demonstrating a strong alignment between company goals and employee roles, efficient execution of tasks, and a deep sense of connection among team members.

Technology Industry Leadership

Among its awards for employer culture, Karsun received repeated recognition as a Technology Industry Top Workplace. It was also recognized locally for its leadership within the public sector information technology industry. Ongoing investment in innovation drives this growth. Here too, Karsun received recognition. This year, it was named a finalist for the 2024 Moxie Award, which honors boldness in business across various sectors, including government contracting and technology. Karsun was specifically recognized in the GovCon 300+ Employees category, reflecting its growing impact and scale.

Another significant accolade came from the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), which named Karsun to its 2024 Tech 100 list. This recognition celebrates visionary companies and leaders in the technology industry. Karsun’s inclusion speaks to its ongoing leadership in enterprise modernization and digital transformation.

The Karsun Innovation Center (KIC) plays a pivotal role in maintaining this leadership position. The center spearheads research and development initiatives, such as the ReDuX AI toolkit, which leverages generative AI to streamline the migration and modernization of legacy mainframe systems. By integrating emerging technologies, Karsun ensures that its solutions remain relevant and effective, helping government agencies meet their missions.

A Call for Experts and Innovators

As Karsun Solutions embarks on its fifteenth year of transforming government IT solutions, it continues to seek passionate individuals ready to accelerate their careers. The company’s mission to modernize enterprise solutions for federal agencies opens numerous avenues for professionals in software development, cloud computing, AI, and data analytics.

Are you ready to explore endless possibilities and turn bold ideas into reality? With Karsun’s commitment to innovation, excellence, integrity, and collaboration, there has never been a better time to join this forward-thinking organization. Join a company that empowers you to expand your potential and make a lasting impact. Visit KarsunCareers.com/jobs and take the first step as you Find Your Next, transforming your career with Karsun Solutions.

At Karsun, we believe that our core values are the foundation of our success. Each quarter, we take the time to celebrate a special group of individuals who embody these values. Nominated by their peers and leaders, these exceptional team members represent the qualities that drive us to deliver superior solutions to our government customers. Let’s take a closer look at how we honor excellence, innovation, teamwork, commitment, integrity, and fun through our employee recognition program.

Celebrating Karsun’s Core Values

Our core values unite us as a team and guide us in our mission. They inspire us to achieve greatness and celebrate those who go above and beyond. Recognizing the employees who live these values every day is a key part of Karsun culture.

Recognizing Excellence

Excellence is at the heart of everything we do at Karsun. We acknowledge team members who go the extra mile to achieve outstanding results. Recently, we celebrated a team member who worked diligently to add an enhancement for a customer. He demonstrated leadership as he ensured the feature was delivered on time with high quality. By honoring such dedication, we recognize both the effort and the achievement.

Innovation in Action

Innovation is a defining attribute of Karsun. We hold monthly Innovation Town Halls and feature our innovators in our quarterly awards. Two award winners we celebrated contributed to the development of ReDuX, Karsun’s toolkit for AI-accelerated mainframe modernization. Innovators recognized by Karsun through our employee awards highlight the importance of collaboration, vision, and the drive to research and develop extraordinary solutions for our team members serving our customers.

The Power of Teamwork

At Karsun, we are one team working toward a common goal. We celebrate those who foster collaboration and improve processes. We recognized one of our team members this year for his work identifying, assessing, and resolving infrastructure challenges as a member of one of our challenge teams. Challenge teams, like those used by our Karsun SEALS, are hackathon-type multiday sessions used to address emerging needs faced by our customers. By contributing to enhancements during these intense exercises, this team member helped his challenge team and improved processes for teams to come.

We recognized other members for their process enhancements and the myriad ways they lift up their teams. These include an award to one team member for his automation for database management, another for a stand-out business analyst whose skills allowed them to be a point person for their team’s needs, and others who were honored for their ongoing support across multiple areas and teams.

Commitment to the Customer

Our commitment to excellence empowers our team as they extend that commitment to the customer’s mission. Several of our 2024 “Do Extraordinary” awardees were recognized for valuing the needs of our customer, their mission, and goals. They never miss a beat in fast-paced environments as they tirelessly provide updates, engage customers, and address emerging challenges.

Upholding Integrity

Integrity is the bedrock of our culture. We value honesty and fairness in all of our dealings. That includes quality backed by our testing experts. Recent awards recognized the work of our team members’ invaluable dedication to software quality, testing, and the overall integrity of the platform delivered to their customers.

Another member of our corporate team was recognized for her pivotal role in producing data as requested. This timely response ensured accurate information was delivered to the corporate teams she supports. Whether it’s integrity through quality or integrity through accuracy, our integrity MVPs ensure Karsun delivers extraordinary results with excellent quality.

Fun at Work

At Karsun, we understand the importance of enjoying our work. We host events like family picnics and team celebrations to build camaraderie. Many of our award winners are recognized for their ability to foster a positive and fun work environment, improving team morale and making Karsun a great place to work. In addition to our quarterly award winners, we also celebrated the ongoing contributions of our team members at our 15th Anniversary celebrations this year. Held in person and virtually, we shared memories, trivia, food, and camaraderie, as we upheld our “fun” core value while honoring the dedication of our team members to our work.

Reflecting on Our Values

Our core values are more than just principles; they are the driving force behind our success. By celebrating the employees who exemplify these values, we not only honor their contributions but also reinforce the importance of these qualities in our daily work. If you are inspired by these stories and want to be part of a team that values excellence, innovation, teamwork, commitment, integrity, and fun, we welcome you to explore opportunities at KarsunCareers.com/jobs.

Thank you for celebrating with us the incredible contributions of our team members who demonstrate Karsun’s core values. They are the reason we continue to deliver extraordinary solutions to our government customers.

This summer, our Karsun Innovation Center was filled with excitement as our intern cohort tackled AI research and development projects. These talented students addressed real-world challenges and contributed to our cutting-edge AI toolkits and resources. As we conclude 2024, we highlight below the exceptional work done by our interns, with a focus on their projects and the skills they honed while with our modernization experts.

Embracing Real-World Challenges

From their first day in our Herndon, Virginia offices, our interns were exposed to complex problems that demanded innovative solutions. Namrata Hari, a Computational Modeling and Data Analytics student, applied her knowledge to develop a task management application using Java Spring Boot and React. Her project prepared her team for upcoming tasks and equipped them to handle the intricacies of modern software development. Namrata’s primary focus during her AI internship was on testing ReDuX, a toolkit for AI-accelerated modernization. She and her team assessed memory, user interface, and overall user experiences, identifying and addressing defects to improve the AI bot’s functionality.

Pioneering AI Solutions with ReDuX AI

Another inspiring story comes from Samhita Kumar, a rising sophomore at Yale University. Samhita leveraged the ReDuX toolkit for her projects, particularly the AI code generation capabilities included in AppPilot. She combined various tools—Java Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Podman, and React, among others—to build full-stack projects and refine her understanding of AI applications. Her work involved proposing enhancements to ReDuX and resolving defects within the AppPilot’s frontend design. Samhita’s contributions are an excellent example of AI internships at the Karsun Innovation Center pushing the boundaries of modern software development.

Enhancing User Experience through Full-Stack Development

Manojdeep Dakavaram‘s internship was a blend of full-stack development and problem-solving. A master’s student in computer science, he worked on multiple projects, including a centralized task management system and automating user access to Karsun’s O’Reilly virtual training library. His efforts improved user experiences by addressing critical bug fixes and developing new features in the React front end of AppPilot. Manojdeep’s work showcased the powerful impact of meticulous development and technology integration.

Data Management and Visualization Innovations

Pravalika Gollapudi, a Master’s student at Arizona State University, concentrated on data management and dashboards. She developed a CRUD application and a React dashboard, which streamlined data interactions and improved presentation reliability through rigorous testing. Pravalika’s role also involved conducting data quality analysis, ensuring data integrity and reliability. Her projects underscored the pivotal role data plays in modern AI and software systems.

Automation and Streamlined Workflows

The importance of automation and workflow optimization was highlighted by Visvajit Murali’s contributions. A student from the University of Virginia, Visvajit utilized technologies like PostgreSQL, Spring Boot, and Docker to automate tedious tasks, enhancing user experiences and system efficiency. His work illustrated how automating repetitive tasks can drive productivity and innovation.

Advancing with Generative AI

Generative AI continues to be a game-changer in the tech industry, as evidenced by the work of our interns and our ReDuX mainframe modernization team. The Karsun Innovation Center challenged these students to explore and propose enhancements to our AI toolkits. This focus on generative AI was epitomized by their efforts in developing and refining AI-driven code generation tools, which promise to accelerate and streamline modernization processes effectively.

Lessons and Growth from Internship Experiences

The professional growth of our interns was significantly influenced by their experiences at the Karsun Innovation Center. Daily interactions with seasoned experts, regular “Show Don’t Tell” meetings, and hands-on projects provided them with invaluable industry insights. Interns like Namrata and Manojdeep highlighted the benefits of a collaborative and supportive environment, while others, such as Pravalika and Visvajit, emphasized the importance of continuous learning and adaptability.

This summer, our interns at the Karsun Innovation Center not only contributed to the development of AI solutions but also grew as professionals poised to lead the next wave of innovation. Their stories serve as testaments to the power of immersive learning and the impact of forward-thinking, supportive mentorship. As we look ahead, we are excited to see how these budding experts will shape the world of AI and technology. Check out our Innovation Center Projects to learn more about ReDuX and other emerging technology projects from our research and development team.