Say goodbye to COBOL

Stuttgart, 28 March 2023 – In the fast-paced world of technology, there is no room for outdated standards. Or so one might think. In 2023, COBOL, a programming language debuted in the 1950s, is still ubiquitous in most financial institutions, insurance firms, airlines, retail companies – the list goes on. This is increasingly becoming a problem for users, due to the high costs of mainframe use and a shortage of experts needed for new development and maintenance.

GFT and CloudFrame have formed a global partnership to help COBOL users make the transition to more efficient platforms. This transition ensures that users save a minimum of 15 percent of their overall yearly mainframe bill. CloudFrame’s proprietary technology converts COBOL code into the much more efficient and future-proof Java code base that can then enable an easy transition to cloud. On average, the cost of a mainframe process is reduced by 50 percent after this code conversion. GFT brings its extensive expertise in CloudFrame implementation and mainframe modernisation to the partnership.

Taking the risk out of a difficult process

“Partnering with GFT will help our customers achieve application modernisation of their COBOL systems much faster,” said Venkat Pillay, founder and CEO of CloudFrame. The combination of CloudFrame’s Relocate and Renovate COBOL modernisation products, along with GFT’s skilled and comprehensive services, will enable customers to easily transform their COBOL into maintainable and future-proof Java.“

Marika Lulay, CEO of GFT, said: “Many people are surprised by how widely COBOL is still used in legacy mainframe applications. Migrating these to a new platform can be a daunting challenge, but it is becoming prohibitively expensive and risky to keep supporting COBOL applications. With CloudFrame’s conversion solutions and our implementation and mainframe expertise, we take the risk out of a process that many IT managers dread, successfully delivering a future-proofed transformation.”

Relocate and Renovate

CloudFrame provides two approaches for its users: Relocate or Renovate. Relocate allows users to move COBOL execution to lower-cost environments like zIIP processors, which are cheaper than standard general-purpose processors (GPPs). Relocate automatically cross-compiles COBOL programs into Java bytecode available for execution on the zIIP without impacting development teams’ tools or processes. Benefits include:

• cost reduction
• an incremental and fully automated approach
• fast implementation
• low risk (functional equivalence guaranteed)
• service level agreement (SLA) performance parity guaranteed
• backward compatibility, without disruption in the existing environment

With the Renovate model, users can migrate to the cloud, automatically converting their COBOL programs into Java and decoupling their application modernisation from their data migration strategy. The benefits of this approach include:

• cost reduction
• incremental migration
• 5x faster time-to-market
• fully automated
• high-quality autogenerated code
• configurable and template-driven
• automated JUnit test case generation
• SonarQube “A” rating

Whichever model users choose, with CloudFrame and GFT’s offering, businesses can finally move away from outdated technology, allowing firms to innovate and boost their competitiveness.