Core applications provide services that power our businesses. These services are life-long investments.
COBOL was launched in 1960 with three guiding principles behind the new language: that it should be most suitable for business data processing applications; it should be easy to understand and that it should be an 'open' standard.
Some people might have thought about replacing COBOL applications but current economic events have conspired against that happening. The primary investment strategy for these core services is to reduce costs and minimise the risk of disruption to the business by service failures. It must also be possible to reuse and extend these investments so they can satisfy new industry regulations and provide value to business via agile IT services.
The future of COBOL is a moving spectrum; it is about managing your COBOL assets more effectively. Medium term, it is about how you take COBOL assets to the web and long term, it is about strategy and how COBOL assets fit within a web services framework.
Micro Focus is committed to COBOL. It is our heritage and the foundation of our future success. From COBOL, we are helping our customers embrace new technologies such as Java, .NET and Web services ensuring that COBOL enjoys the role of first-class citizen in the new world.
The COBOL Community
Despite its critics, an estimated 2 million people are currently working in COBOL in one form or another. Charles Schwab online service, for example, is a big COBOL application with a small web-front - It is estimated that half the business applications in use today are written in COBOL.
COBOL is changing with the times and Micro Focus is at the forefront of change. COBOL is being re-energized as an important component of moving businesses to the Web seamlessly and efficiently.
Micro Focus offers a comprehensive scalable suite of innovative COBOL development environments, providing a bridge between COBOL and Java, offering fast migrations to new platforms as well as innovative ways to reuse existing assets and Web services.
Micro Focus is committed to the COBOL community in many ways including our Partner Network, through sponsorship of http://www.cobolportal.com/ (a leading COBOL web portal developed to server the COBOLl community) and in the support of the "All Things COBOL" webring.
The All Things COBOL Webring
What is a webring? A webring is a method that allows related sites to link together. Visitors of one COBOL site can use the Webring to link directly to another COBOL site. This is just one of the ways in which Micro Focus supports the global COBOL Community. Use the links below if you wish to visit other sites in this community.
