Now, mainframes running COBOL can go to cloud, mobile platforms
The IBM Enterprise Cobol for z/OS compiler adds Java, XML capabilities to let developers maximize hardware and improve application performance.
IBM has recently announced new software to help organizations extend crucial business and government applications running on System z mainframes to Web, cloud and mobile environments. The IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS compiler lets developers maximize hardware and improve application performance by as much as 10 to 20 percent, the company said in its announcement.
Created more than 50 years ago — based largely on the work of Navy computing pioneer Grace Hopper — COBOL is still running critical applications in government, finance, travel and insurance. Some estimate that between 60 and 80 percent of all business transactions are still done in COBOL.
And even though mobile and Web technologies might be more attractive to developers and new businesses, “the reality is that most organizations that have been around for more than 30 years still run their core business processes using systems that were written in COBOL,” Forrester’s Kurt Bittner wrote in a recent blog post. And those organizations are looking for anything that makes these apps easier to evolve and extend, Bittner added.
Moving COBOL applications to the cloud offers many benefits for agencies, including location independence, which is critical as the workforce becomes increasingly mobile and open data and data sharing increases.
With Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, “IBM is helping companies reduce operating costs and processing time associated with these applications while delivering new capabilities to take advantage of cloud, Web and mobile devices," said Kevin Stoodley, Rational chief technology officer and IBM Fellow.
The new software helps deliver innovative solutions and reduce costs by:
- Providing support for Java 7, new UTF-8 built-ins, debugging enhancements and support for unbounded tables and groups.
- Supporting a new level of z/OS System Management Facilities tracking, which allows users who implement sub-capacity tracking to reduce their administrative overhead.
- Improving control over XML documents with the z/OS XML parser, allowing parsing workload to be off loaded to specialty engines to reduce operating costs.
IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS v5.1 compiler works with the latest versions of IBM Customer Information Control System, Information Management System and DB2 software. It is expected to be available later this quarter.
NEXT STORY: Amazon gets FedRAMP OK for cloud services