Coss Solutions

Old technology

Application development for financial administrative and logistic application software has taken place ever since the first, somewhat, affordable computer systems became available for the enterprise.

Since the 60’s there have been built thousands of applications running on mainframe computers supporting the administrative and logistic processes for all kinds of business.

The most common programming language used for this purpose was COBOL, an abbreviation that stands for Common Business Oriented Language. COBOL on IBM, BULL, Unisys, NCR and many other computers.

To date there are still billions of COBOL programs that rule the world of banking, airports, government, travel agencies, insurance, real estate merchants and so on.

Often no longer running on the big iron but by now on Intel based computer platforms broadly available worldwide. But nevertheless, still COBOL and often in an emulation of the big old iron.

All the applications written in COBOL and running to date represent reliable and effective machinery taking perfectly well care of what they were designed to do. Supporting business. Many applications were designed back in the 60’s but were extended and improved over and over again ever since. Making them fit like a tailor made suit to the company that uses it. And therefore making them indispensable.

But…time keeps on ticking. In spite of the fact these applications do precisely what they were intended for, business needs are growing. Growing beyond the boundaries once set by the limitations of technology from the early age of computing. Of course this is not new. For decades we have been modernizing the old applications making them meet new standards, using middleware to give the user interface a new look and opening up data structures to provide access to business intelligence products.

But, all is still COBOL. Because it works. No need to fix something that is not broken.  


New technology

Look around and everything you look at has something to do with computers or even is computerized.

Music in your room ? You no longer need to take out a black vinyl disc from its sleeve to enjoy the sounds of your favorite artists. A CD ? Old school too. With your smartphone you now control the media center in your wireless home network that provides you with music and video on demand without getting out of your chair. A chair designed with a CAD application and manufactured fully automated using modern day robotics.

Your car does not need an experienced mechanic when you want to check out its technical health. Plug it into the service computer of your local dealer and you will receive a detailed report on most every component in your car that needs maintenance (don’t be surprised to see how little that actually is).

Even the thermostat on the wall in your room is intelligent. What once was a simple knob on the wall which you could turn left for cold and right for heating is now a computer. A computer that manages your home climate based upon the weather outside, your preferences on saving costs by turning the temperature down when you are not at home and even a check whether there is anyone in the house that needs warmth, overriding your preferences, distinguishing people from pets.

When I would write this say, 10 years ago, people would think I was nuts. Today it is common in most every modern household.

If my father could be around for a moment and would ask me how things are in this, for him distant, future I would say : Well, the gadgets we have are very superior to what was common in your time…but most everything else is very much the same.


Everything is the same

Back to the computer technology we use for our business management. You would be surprised to know how many applications are still running that actually process punch cards to date ! Well, the punch card no longer is made from cardboard but it probably is a record in a set that represents the old punch card stack. 80 byte records that each represent a series of 80 1’s or 0’s as was common with the punch card. Or an XML representation, which can do the same.

Why ? Because the application was once designed to get its input from these cards. The application however was modernized over the decades. When the punch card died magnetic tape took its place. Then the floppy disk took its place. When the floppy disk died data exchange over WAN and LAN took its place, and so on…

But processing data, no matter in what form, remained the same. Looking at a simplified example of a salary administration system, it will need to be fed with information about employees, base salaries, overtime, departments, salary components etcetera. Then it can calculate the net wages to be transferred, generate input for the general ledger system that actually makes the monthly payments to each employee and the tax department.

That is how things went in the 60’s. And that is how things are still going to date.

But the gadgets we do it with are way more slick. No punch cards but electronic data transfer. No magnetic tape but backup to the cloud. No green screens but browser based user interfaces, if need be accessible with your smartphone from the same lazy chair you control your home entertainment system from.


So what ?

Given the previous, when we are dealing with COBOL applications we are dealing with past, present and future.

Where past represents all efforts taken to make the application to what it is, a working set of programs meeting business needs.

Where present represents the fact these applications are indispensable for conducting business management according to the needs of every enterprise to date.

Where future stands for what the technical implementation will be for these applications in order to meet future business and technical requirements while still serving the core competencies encapsulated inside of them over the decades.

Meeting new technical standards over and over is a fact of life. This has been proven in the past and there is no reason to believe it will be different in the future. Changes to the implementation of applications are often driven by financial motives. The big old iron was expensive. So we diverted to other platforms. Way more cost effective while still suiting our needs.

Then there are other choices to be made. What technology would we use to house our applications in the near future? Will it be Linux or Windows and if Windows, will we embrace the .NET framework ?

When it comes to applications developed in COBOL all of these choices are feasible. You can move any COBOL to Linux, Windows and .NET. Or even to Microsoft’s cloud implementation Azure.

The technology is there. COSS can help moving your applications into the future. And we can help you with the expertise needed to make this progress.