The government of California is reportedly having trouble
pushing through spending cuts because of a lack of skilled
Cobol programmers.
The state government wants to cut wages, but its payroll system
is written in Cobol. A lack of skilled programmers makes it
difficult to push these changes through,
says
the New York Times.
It's a problem many organisations are facing, according to Andy
Sinclair, senior director of product management at software
supplier Micro Focus. "Cobol is still
used by most banks, governments and big businesses," he said. But
despite this, the IT industry is experiencing a
shortage of skilled
Cobol staff.
Many people expected Cobol to disappear by the year 2000, said
Sinclair, but the competitive edge its systems give to businesses
means it is
still widely used.
In the past, companies would have had all their systems written
in Cobol. But systems such as HR and finance have been slowly
replaced by software packages from the likes of Oracle, leaving
Cobol with the core business systems.
The fact that Cobol systems have been built for over 30 years
means each one is unique, and is tailored to each individual
business's needs. These systems have given companies their
competitive edge and have proved far harder to replace or rewrite
than expected.
Tesco is a good example to follow, said Sinclair. The
supermarket giant uses software packages for the front-end
functions every retailer has to perform. But it
integrates these with back-end systems designed over the past
two decades. These are the systems that make Tesco different from
its competitors, said Sinclair.
But despite these advantages, the number of Cobol programmers
has fallen steadily. Sinclair estimates there are between a million
and 1.5 million
programmers worldwide, when the market needs double that
number.
Over the past couple of decades, universities have increasingly
preferred to teach students newer languages, such as Java, instead
of Cobol, and businesses have tended not to invest in training
their own staff until they reach crisis point.
But now people are realising Cobol skills are still necessary,
says Sinclair. "People are beginning to realise these systems are
still performing. We need to get Cobol back onto university
curriculums."