The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) is proud to announce the completion of the most significant technology transformation in its history. After extensive planning and execution, PHEAA successfully moved their COMPASS℠ Loan Servicing System from a legacy mainframe environment to a modern, cloud-based platform, COMPASS Cloud. This long-anticipated modernization is a cornerstone of PHEAA’s overall strategy and delivers a more flexible, secure, and modern system that enhances service for both clients and customers.
PHEAA partnered with Heirloom Computing, a recognized leader in mainframe modernization and a multi-award-winning technology provider, to execute the migration without the use of a third-party integrator. This direct engagement model ensured strong alignment, agility, and accountability throughout a technically complex transformation. Heirloom Computing’s solution modernizes mainframe applications into functional Java, enabling execution on any cloud platform.
The partnership began with a highly successful pilot that addressed the most complex transactions and validated full-feature parity. Building upon that success, PHEAA and Heirloom established a shared development environment that enabled iterative testing and proactive issue resolution while maintaining uninterrupted operations.
“This was not just a vendor project—it was a unified effort,” said Michael Hendler, PHEAA Chief Information Officer. “Our teams worked hand-in-hand to deliver a seamless transition without compromising functionality or disrupting critical services.”
The technology partnership proved instrumental in completing the massive migration successfully, on time, and without disruption, while positioning PHEAA teams to independently support and evolve the platform going forward. Such a smooth rollout is uncommon for transformations in the public sector and of this scale and was made possible by the unwavering dedication of the PHEAA and Heirloom technical teams. Additionally, the partnership’s prior successful migration of three guaranty platforms from mainframe to cloud—leading up to the loan servicing system transition—demonstrated a repeatable modernization framework that can be applied to other legacy systems.
“Heirloom is differentiated by delivery,” said Gary Crook, CEO at Heirloom Computing. “Our platform is designed to deliver value at every step of a client’s modernization journey—from day one through production and beyond.”
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