Today MongoDB announced AMP, an application modernization platform designed to help enterprises transform their entire application stack.

MongoDB has an existing tool called Relational Migrator, designed to help organizations move from relational databases to MongoDB. AMP is much, much broader in ambition because AMP is not confined to database-related modernization tasks, like schema migration and extracting stored procedures. This is about wholesale modernization: you want to containerize your legacy app? You want to upgrade your version of Java? MongoDB says AMP is here to help.

AMP touts “3 T’s” that drive the migration process: technology, technique, and talent.

• technology: a migration platform that is underpinned by LLMs
• technique: processes around the tools
• talent: MongoDB engineers guiding the process

In other words, AMP is about making the wholesale changes necessary to migrate an application from using a relational data model to a document model.

AMP in the Market

It should not come as a surprise that a company close to the data wants to be the engine driving broader application transformation. Especially in 2025, the data layer serves as an indispensable foundation for truly modern, scalable services.

RedMonk previously ruminated about the collision of application platforms and databases.

Given the fact that most application platforms will require a database and most database platforms will be backing applications, the clear implication is that application platforms should be eyeing database vendors with an eye towards acquisition, and that database vendors should be considering application platforms for the same reason.

The market is driving players at both ends of the spectrum towards vertical integration, in other words.

- Stephen O’Grady, Vertical Integration: The Collision of App Platforms and Database

The announcement of MongoDB AMP is a related offshoot. While AMP doesn’t represent vertical integration between the database and the app platform in the direct sense, it’s absolutely a move towards database players taking more ownership of the application stack.

Going Forward

From the database perspective, relational is not going anywhere. Oracle is not standing still in all of this; they have their own initiatives to win workloads (back) from MongoDB with GoldenGate and an approach called JSON-Relational Duality Views. Postgres continues its momentum, evidenced by both Snowflake and Databricks acquiring Postgres-focused companies (Crunchy Data and Neon) to strengthen their data lake portfolios.

From an overall app migration perspective, there are many options that rely on both consulting services and product-led approaches.

Many enterprises rely on consulting engagements to augment their in-house teams when it comes to major undertakings like app modernization. It is both the tried and true path and also a path with risk. Mongo’s press release cites the shortcomings of traditional app migration via system integrators, et al as “expensive multi-year consulting engagements that can be manual and resource-intensive.” It’s not uncommon for these engagements to stall before delivering real results.

Recently many AI-driven products have also emerged with the promise of speeding transformation projects via automation. Cloud vendors have long had modernization and migration tools in their portfolio that have since be beefed up with AI. For example, see IBM’s watsonx Code Assistant for Z and AWS Transform. But cloud companies are just the tip of the iceberg. Moderne has OpenRewrite. All the code gen tools are chasing this market, and a solid example of this is GitHub’s Copilot app modernization for Java (which uses OpenRewrite).

These AI tools are game changers for enterprise migration projects. That said, even with product assistance the process of getting AI-led projects to production remains fraught. Legacy environments are almost by definition complex and require extensive context and guardrails in order to use the models well.

Over time, we expect AI tooling to become increasingly capable, even further reducing the amount of manual work required. But today, however, most solutions still need the combination of human expertise and tools.

What AMP Signals

• MongoDB has long been known in the market as a database that appeals to developers, but AMP represents a strategic expansion into the application space.
• We will continue to see overlaps of AI-tooling + consulting, but AI frameworks mean that these offerings will no longer come just from traditional professional services players. The future will bring an increasingly wide range of vendors and providers.

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Disclaimer: MongoDB is a RedMonk client, but this piece is not commissioned and reflects my own opinions. Additionally: AWS, Crunchy Data, GitHub, IBM, and Oracle are also RedMonk customers.