Your experts will retire. Their knowledge doesn’t have to.

April 22, 2026

6 MIN read

As experienced Adabas & Natural developers approach retirement, organizations face a growing risk of losing decades of mission-critical business knowledge along with them. This presents a significant challenge in transferring the deep application logic and operational insight that long-tenured teams carry. Software AG’s development modernization tools and practices, including AI-assisted coding and modern IDE support, are helping organizations bridge that gap and build a sustainable path forward.

When the clock runs out on institutional knowledge

Two months before the last two seasoned developers of a thirty-year-old application retired from a Nordic financial institution, a new team was hired to take over. Although the young developers were familiar with the syntax of Natural, the language in which the application was written, they had no knowledge of the largely undocumented business processes behind the code. With 36,000 active loan agreements with 19 billion Euros at stake, this wasn’t just a staffing change, it was a critical business continuity challenge.

This scenario reflects a growing reality across industries. As long-time Adabas & Natural developers and system architects approach retirement, organizations are facing a growing challenge: how to retain critical application knowledge and ensure continuity in core business operations. While the conversation around modernization has traditionally focused on tools and infrastructure, a more strategic and urgent issue is coming into focus—how to build a sustainable development model for the next generation.

This challenge is already pushing organizations to find creative solutions. Husbanken, the Norwegian state housing bank, is one example. Facing the same generational transition, their team turned to AI to support code analysis, automated documentation, and comparisons across their application landscape, bringing new efficiency and transparency to systems that had been built up over decades. What had previously existed only in the minds of senior developers could suddenly be surfaced, structured, and shared. It’s exactly the kind of use case that points to where AI-assisted development is heading.

The hidden risk: It’s not about programming skills

This is not primarily a skills gap in programming in Natural. The language remains approachable and fast to learn, even for new hires. The real complexity lies in transferring the deep application and business logic that has evolved over decades. In many customer environments, much of this knowledge resides in the minds of a small number of experienced employees—many of whom are nearing retirement. Once they leave, organizations risk losing not just technical capabilities, but mission-critical operational insight.

The situation is particularly critical in organizations that are now outsourcing large parts of their development. When the developers who both built and maintained the applications and understand the system and the underlying business retire, the bridge between technical execution and strategic business needs can collapse. What’s at stake is not only technical stability but also business agility and risks that will need mitigation.

To counteract this, leading organizations are taking proactive steps. Some are rehiring former experts on a part-time basis to mentor newer team members. Others are investing in structured onboarding and role-based learning paths to ramp up developers quickly and effectively. Software AG supports this directly through its learning platform, which offers training programs and certification paths specifically designed to build Adabas & Natural expertise in new team members. These initiatives ensure that application knowledge is preserved, shared, and gradually passed on, reducing long-term risk and building organizational resilience. For a first-hand perspective on what that journey looks like, watch The Junior Developer’s Guide to Legacy Systems.

Tools that bridge generations

At the same time, development teams are rethinking their tool chains. Natural AI Code Assistant (coming in 2026) is set to become a primary tool for addressing generational change directly. Designed specifically for Adabas & Natural environments, it helps teams ask questions about existing documentation, understand and explain unfamiliar code, generate and validate new code, and run automated tests. These capabilities are especially valuable when experienced developers are no longer available to answer questions. It supports both on-premise and cloud deployment, reflecting the security and compliance needs of the enterprise customers who rely on these systems most.

Natural for Visual Studio Code, also arriving in 2026, complements this by bringing Natural development into the IDE that today’s developers already know. With a familiar interface, seamless integration with the VS Code ecosystem, and support for DevOps workflows side-by-side with COBOL, SSH, and JCL, it lowers the learning curve for new hires and makes Natural more accessible to recent graduates. In all cases, the integration of source code repositories allows teams to implement branching strategies and manage concurrent development efforts, which is especially useful for geographically distributed teams. DevOps practices can also help preserve institutional knowledge by embedding business logic into automated testing and deployment pipelines. When experienced developers retire, their expertise lives on in the code, tests, and processes, not just in their memories.

Finally, the adoption of NaturalONE, with its modern Eclipse-based development environment and productivity-enhancing features such as advanced debugging, profiling, and code coverage, enables faster onboarding and improved collaboration. See how the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles used NaturalONE to modernize their mainframe development while maintaining the reliability of a system processing millions of transactions annually, and watch Virginia DMV’s Joshua Elkins describe their modernization journey in their own words.

The business impact of modernizing development practices is clear. Improved time to market, greater flexibility in managing change, and a foundation for DevOps practices that all contribute to a more responsive IT organization. These capabilities are proving essential in supporting digital transformation without compromising the reliability of their core systems.

However, development modernization success depends on full commitment. Partial transitions tend to introduce inefficiencies rather than solving them. Organizations that benefit most are those that align technical adoption with clear strategic direction and change management.

The future of Natural development

Looking ahead, innovation continues. The evolution towards Visual Studio Code as an additional modern interface for Natural development, combined with the Natural AI Code Assistant, signals clear alignment with industry standards and the expectations of today’s developers. Both are arriving in 2026, and together they promise to make Adabas & Natural more accessible, more productive, and more future-ready than ever.

Organizations that take a holistic approach to modernizing development that combines skills development, tool adoption, and strategic planning will be best positioned to navigate generational change. By acting now, they can safeguard the knowledge embedded in their applications and ensure continued business success well into the future. For a broader look at everything Software AG offers to support this transition — including professional services, training programs, and staffing solutions — read Building the next generation of Adabas & Natural experts.