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Lingering legacy keeps Cobol coding

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If of course a new graduate can be lured into a career in legacy code maintenance instead of app development.

While MicroFocus has a vested interest in keeping legacy systems running (last year it acknowledged a plan to support the continued teaching of Cobol at Indian universities) it is hedging its bets, pushing ahead with solutions intended to allow legacy systems to be modernised.

Earlier this month it announced a collaboration with Microsoft to create so called Reference Environments which can be used to demonstrate how core mainframe applications can be migrated to a Windows platform running on modern servers.

Just as modern languages have eroded Cobol's dominance in enterprise scale development, so servers have tilted at mainframes.

Last October BMC Software released its fifth global mainframe survey which found that the number of mainframe sites in Australia had dropped from almost 120 in 1997 to 40, with expectations that it will eventually settle at around 35 sites by 2014.

Another flesh wound for the Cobol crowd.

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Beverley Head

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Beverley Head is a Sydney-based freelance writer who specialises in exploring how and why technology changes everything - society, business, government, education, health. Beverley started writing about the business of technology in London in 1983 before moving to Australia in 1986. She was the technology editor of the Financial Review for almost a decade, and then became the newspaper's features editor before embarking on a freelance career, during which time she has written on a broad array of technology related topics for the Sydney Morning Herald, Age, Boss, BRW, Banking Day, Campus Review, Education Review, Insite and Government Technology Review. Beverley holds a degree in Metallurgy and the Science of Materials from Oxford University and a deep affection for things which are shaken not stirred.

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