Latest Articles
COBOL PART 3: The Experts’ View
As COBOL reaches 65 years of loyal service in the IT world, this third piece in a four-part homage how a veteran IT technology has remained successful for so long. We previously introduced some of the reasons behind COBOL’s enduring success as a business language. Yet...
Thoughts, experiences, and insights about COBOL
Looking back, I can still vividly remember the year when I graduated from college with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. It was 2008. Coming from university, I was quite confident in the skills and exposure that I acquired. PHP with...
COBOL has the Staying Power of a Keith Richards Guitar Riff
The most recent wave of media articles predicting the death of COBOL happened just before the pandemic. In 2019, COBOL supporters were celebrating the 60th birthday of this venerable computer programming language. Now COBOL is 65, and it’s still around. COBOL is...
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...
What I wish everyone understood about COBOL
Something I wish everyone understood about COBOL is… Though developed in 1959, COBOL remains the backbone of numerous mission-critical systems. It provides a level of operational stability that's difficult – if not impossible – to match with newer, less mature...
Revolutionizing Mainframe Optimization: Prioritize Business Impact Over IT Resource Management
The backbone of global business operations runs through mainframes—which handle a staggering 30 billion transactions daily, hold 80% of the world’s business data, and process 90% of credit card transactions. Mainframes are not relics of the past but are integral...
Legacy IT, COBOL, and the Art of Aircraft Maintenance
Inspired by Robert Pirsig's book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Airlines use a specific approach to aircraft maintenance that can serve as a blueprint for legacy application management and budgeting.In this article, I explain why Pirsig’s book is...
Not a Legacy but a Legend
If you’re looking for a staunch defender of the mainframe and its role in the global economy, look no further than Peter Enrico, President of Enterprise Performance Strategies, Inc. Planet Mainframe caught up with Enrico at SHARE Kansas City. “Mainframes have been...
The Many Charms of COBOL
During my studies in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), also known as East Germany, I immersed myself in the world of programming languages. My first companions on this journey were PL/1 and the ubiquitous assembler ASM370. Why these two? Well, the...
Information Technology: IT’s Key Ingredients
As COBOL reaches 65 years of loyal service to the IT world, our four-part homage attempts to answer how this veteran IT technology has been successful for so long. The COBOL programming language – which stands for Common Business Oriented Language – began life in...
