At a recent gathering of IT leaders, one IT director from a
well-known insurance firm confessed he was facing a team skills
crisis.
Although he needed people who knew legacy systems, he found that
his team of web developers and Java programmers were reluctant to
learn older programming languages such as Cobol and RPG.
Despite predictions that it is only a matter of time before
mainframe operating systems are eradicated from organisations, many
companies, especially in the financial sector, are still benefiting
from existing legacy assets.
One analyst recently estimated that there are 200 billion lines of
Cobol in production worldwide.
With "saving costs" the mantra of the day, simply ripping out
legacy systems is a lavish approach few have the luxury of
pursuing. More IT directors are now looking to join the old with
the new. They want to integrate systems written in Cobol with newer
applications based around the latest technologies such as XML, .net
and J2EE.
Firms such as Microfocus, which sells productivity aids for Cobol
programmers, have predicted a rise in demand for developers who can
work in multiple-language environments and straddle Cobol and
J2EE.
Microfocus is working with universities in Eastern Europe to teach
Cobol skills. With many legacy application programmers in the West
nearing retirement, it believes organisations will turn to offshore
providers to deliver low-cost application support.
This represents a volte-face from a few years ago when Java and
web-based skills were all the rage, but it now seems that Cobol is
cool again.
But for the dotcom generation of programmers brought up with whizzy
websites and funky e-business applications, Cobol is a language of
the past and a world they are reluctant to embrace despite the job
opportunities it offers. Many would regard work in this area as a
step backward.
So as the legacy world is snubbed by the new breed, older ITers who
cut their teeth on Cobol may be in an ideal position to exploit
this new found appetite for their skills.