Rocket Software, Inc. is an American software company headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. It operates in a low-profile but foundational area: the IT systems that power the day-to-day operations of large organizations. Its solutions serve banks, insurers, manufacturers and government agencies in particular, for which evolving an application must not compromise service continuity.
Growth built around enterprise systems
Founded in 1990 by Andy Youniss and Johan Magnusson, Rocket Software grew within the mainframe ecosystem, with historically close ties to IBM. The company gradually expanded its portfolio through in-house development and acquisitions, maintaining a consistent focus: extending the usefulness of existing IT investments while enabling their transformation.
Bain Capital’s investment in the company in 2018 marked an important milestone in this trajectory. In 2024, Rocket Software acquired OpenText’s Application Modernization and Connectivity business, which had been part of the Micro Focus portfolio. This transaction strengthened its offering in application modernization, COBOL environments and connectivity to legacy systems.
Connecting legacy applications and hybrid architectures
Rocket Software’s portfolio covers several layers of enterprise IT: infrastructure management, application development, data access, security and automation. The company offers tools for IBM Z and IBM i environments, as well as MultiValue database technologies, including UniVerse and UniData. This diversity allows it to address both applications and the platforms that host them.
Its approach to modernization does not necessarily involve replacing a mainframe with cloud infrastructure. It may involve improving interfaces, exposing existing functions through APIs, integrating data into new use cases or bringing teams responsible for legacy systems closer to DevOps methods. Code understanding and application lifecycle management tools also aim to simplify the maintenance of software assets accumulated over several decades.
For customers, the challenge is to reconcile technical evolution, risk management and regulatory constraints. Rocket Software therefore positions itself for projects where understanding the dependencies between applications, data and infrastructure matters as much as adding new features.
What next?
What comes next will depend in particular on the integration of acquired businesses and the coherence of the portfolio offered to customers. Renewing the skills base around COBOL and mainframes is another long-term challenge. Against a backdrop of growing interest in artificial intelligence, the ability to make legacy data accessible, governed and secure could also become increasingly important. For Rocket Software, the outlook remains one of gradual modernization: opening critical systems to new uses without underestimating their complexity or availability requirements.