PART 2: COBOL— Thriving to survive

As COBOL reaches 65 years of loyal service to the IT world, this second piece in a four-part homage attempts to answer how a veteran IT technology has remained successful for so long.

In the modern age, enterprise IT has grown in scale and complexity beyond recognition. Any organization of a reasonable size requires all manner of IT systems to support its operations – an ERP system to store information about who works at the organization; CRM systems to store information about the customers of the organization; and vast data lakes and related systems to store information about all that information.

Then, there are the other data lakes that enable different tools to try to make sense of all that information. And that’s before you train your large language models (LLMs) to look at it. The amount of “I” in IT is bewildering, as is the task of trying to manage it. 

“The amount of “I” in IT is bewildering, as is the task of trying to manage it.”

Sitting quietly in the corner, meanwhile, are some servers that run the entirety of an organization’s core production systems. These systems often rely on older, solid, but unsexy technology. But servers bring products to life, allows us to sell to clients, allows clients to pay, and provides the necessary customer-facing service that enables brands to offer superior value. 

This can be in service to: 

• a banking account product 
• an insurance company quotation system and new product program 
• a real-time travel information and booking system to offer the best prices for the right routes and accommodations 
• a haulage and logistics solution to enable real-time tracking of parcel shipments 
• one of an endless array of ecommerce retailer or distributor sites

These are tried-and-trusted systems, written in-house, that accurately reflect the business practices of the organization, and enable it to sell products, make money, and interact with the client base. Away from the hullaballoo of the other IT investments, these systems have been around for a long time. They just work. 

In sharp contrast to the kaleidoscopic diversity of other IT investments, these systems are very often built using the same key ingredient. 

COBOL.

Invisible Success

With a few exceptions, relatively few people remain the custodians of COBOL systems.

Long-standing technology in modern IT often goes unnoticed because it has worked reliably for years, undisturbed in its success. However, the needs of COBOL applications have evolved anyway, creating new requirements for support.

Despite their importance, reduced funding and resources have led to technical debt –in many ways because there weren’t any serious problems to solve. As a result, many IT organizations have unwittingly neglected COBOL’s value, turning it from a business asset into a liability.

“Many IT organizations have unwittingly neglected COBOL’s value, turning it from a business asset into a liability.”

COBOL Code Conundrum

The scope of this conundrum is the topic of debate. Back in the 1990’s, Gartner estimated there was north of two hundred billion lines of COBOL code running in production. Since then, both the vendor community and the Open Mainframe Project surveyed the market to find a more updated total. Both found the number to be much higher than Gartner’s — now upwards of 250 billion lines of code.

If we accept the same margin of error in all the estimates, it is reasonable to assume that COBOL still accounts for hundreds of billions of lines of code.

Further evidence of an existential challenge surrounding COBOL comes from vendors who claim to offer a means to accelerate the understanding, automated translation, and transform other types of COBOL systems.

Today, there is a range of options if you want a modernization solution for all that COBOL code. Established mainframe vendors, niche market stalwarts, and contemporary AI startups have all moved into the COBOL pond, suggesting a large market opportunity and appetite.

Perform Various

What must COBOL compete with in the modern IT programming landscape? We know a lot has changed since COBOL emerged in the 1950’s. By the 1970’s, it was the most pervasive language globally.  And here in 2024, COBOL celebrates its 65^th anniversary.

Can COBOL meet the ever-evolving technology demands?

The list of modern-day requirements for contemporary COBOL include: 

• Support new technical use cases in terms of service orientation, API integration, .NET and JVM integration, and container deployment 
• COBOL applications can benefit from creating new user interfaces as part of modern IDE toolkits, and as part of more contemporary composite applications 
• Deploy across Hybrid IT environments including mainframe, Linux, Unix, and Windows environments, on physical, virtualized / cloud environments, or any combination 
• Support a renewed development process covering agile, DevOps practices, integrating across a range of CI, CD, and test automation tooling for faster application delivery

No list of requirements would be complete without some overt reference to Artificial Intelligence. Whether automating existing IT and business processes or using AI to support legacy systems, the GenAI and COBOL intersection is an important consideration for future innovation. 

Most of this list are fair and reasonable expectations of any modern-day programming language. Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly, COBOL happily handles all these requirements already.

Modern COBOL Development Environments

If you want to use agile methods, the latest IDEs, contemporary toolchains, hybrid deployment; include new APIs or other integrations; or use AI to assist onboarding and understanding, the modern-day COBOL development environment offers it all.

“The [COBOL] language continues to evolve as the compilers get faster and the tools get richer.”

The language continues to evolve as the compilers get faster and the tools get richer. There was even a new standard released in 2023. While COBOL was born a generations ago, the current incarnation remains more contemporary than some realise. Yet, as positive as COBOL’s progress and relevancy have been, the question remains whether it was still the right language for those tasked with building critical systems.

In Part 3 of this four-Part series on COBOL, we will examine the perspectives of a wide range of industry experts as they share their views on COBOL.

Catch up with Derek Britton’s COBOL Part 1, Information Technology: IT’s Key Ingredients