When it comes time to rationalize that portfolio, you want objective analysis about which programs are more complex, which ones are harder to maintain, which are easier to enhance, he says. RPA makes it easy to get going.

Another typical usage is in the planning and budgeting process. Companies that are looking to get a better view of their maintenance costs, for example, can use the analysis to gauge the maintainability of these systems.

The beauty of RPA versus other tools or consulting services is speed and price. "We're doing 100 apps in a week, where it would take months" with other methods, Pizzutillo says. "We're reducing the time to value to get analysis done quicker, we're adding an objective, automated process to assess the technical risk, and at a lower price point."

A one-time assessment using RPA costs $1,000 per application. "We just did 3 million lines of code for a client and charged $1,000 for that analysis," Pizzutillo says.

Gartner's Duggan says that "once you know you need to do a migration or a consolidation, or need to improve the quality of a piece of code, this kind of offering yields some pretty strong positives. I don't know of anyone that has gotten into these tools and didn't get value out of it."