While the COBOL language is more than 60 years old, businesses are planning to modernise the way they use it, rather than replace it with newer languages, according to a new study commissioned by Micro Focus, UK-based software vendor.
The Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) has long been vital to many banks’ payment processing infrastructures, for example.
The survey found that 70% of all enterprises in more than 40 countries favour modernisation of their COBOL-based systems as the right approach for implementing strategic change compared to replacing or retiring COBOL applications.
Among those favouring modernisation, 53% plan to pursue initiatives aligned to application modernisation and integration of COBOL systems. Almost two-thirds of all respondents are planning to improve upon their existing COBOL systems this year.
A COBOL survey was also conducted by Micro Focus in 2017, when 84% of respondents classified their organisations’ COBOL applications as “strategic”. This year, that figure has increased to 92%.
In 2017, the survey found that the size of the average application code base ran 8.4 million lines. The new edition of the survey found a 1.5 million line increase, as the average application code base has 9.9 million lines.
