Plotting the successful history (and future) of the COBOL computer language.

2. How it started…
• Designed by committee in 1959 – an
original ‘open’ project
• … to support the processing of data
in business
• Defined as needing to be English-like
so it was easy to learn and
understand
• Defined as needing to produce the
same results across any machinery
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

3. Invented by
women, for
women
• Grace Hopper
• Jean Sammet
• Mary Hawes
• A generation of female
COBOL programmers in
the 1960s

4. IBM Z/OS
RedHat
Data General
OS/2
Texas Instruments
SCO UNIX SVR4
Intel Solaris
Silicon Graphics
TEC
Sparc Solaris
Matsushita
Siemens SNI
HP/UX AWS
Ubuntu
MS DOS
.NET
Toshiba
Hitachi
Fujitsu
NEC PA-RISC
Azure
Bull GCOS
Linux on Z
Canon
Sequent
DEC Alpha Tru64
Amdahl
JVM
SUSE
AS/400
AIX
Windows 10
OSF/1
WinNT
COBOL became ubiquitous …
NT on Alpha
Mitsubishi
Windows 3.1
ICL VME
SCO UNIXWARE
PFU
Win95
Omron
AT&T
olivetti
Compaq
Panasonic

5. … and remained easy to learn
5
“COBOL IS ONE OF THE FEW LANGUAGES
WRITTEN IN THE LAST 50 YEARS THAT’S
READABLE AND UNDERSTANDABLE.”
“IT’S NOT JUST A WRITE-ONLY LANGUAGE,
YOU CAN COME BACK YEARS LATER AND
UNDERSTAND THE CODE.”
“IF YOU CAN WORK WITH ECLIPSE, JAVA,
VISUAL STUDIO AND C# YOU CAN MASTER
COBOL IN A MATTER OF HOURS.”
“ANY DEVELOPER WORTH THEIR SALT IN
ANY OTHER LANGUAGE ANYWHERE
COULD LEARN ENOUGH COBOL IN A WEEK
TO MAINTAIN CODE.”

6. … and very successful
• Tens of thousands of applications and
hundreds of billions of lines of
production code
• COBOL supports banking, insurance,
transportation, government, retail,
healthcare and many other sectors
• COBOL remains overwhelmingly
strategic, with 92% response rate from
the marketplace in 2020

7. Scientific vs Business vs Academic languages
…but not cool enough
COBOL came from
commerce, not academia.
There was no intellectual
challenge in learning it.
Which meant it was never
widely taught, or well
regarded by computing
graduates.

8. 1970
2020
2019
Y2K
Concerns over Y2K and advent of
client/server and mid-range technology
created public debate of COBOL’s long-
term suitability
2000
COBOL’s 60th anniversary widely recognized
and positively reported – although most
references are to its age and dwindling value
2019
Misinformation
about COBOL and
COVID
Activists start the
OMP COBOL
Working Group
2020
COBOL’s commercial suitability made it a
de-facto standard for business systems
1960s-70s
…which eroded its reputation

9. … But a new voice for COBOL emerged
…For COBOL exponents everywhere.

10. The COBOL Working Group
objectives – tell the world the
truth about COBOL
Step 1. OMP 2021 COBOL Market
Survey:
• Understand the size of the COBOL
Market
• Identify issues and concerns
• Identify how organizations are
addressing the issues

11. COBOL
Prevalence
• 250 Billion lines of COBOL
code in production (based on
OMP survey responses and
subsequent extrapolation)
• Industries with greatest
reliance on COBOL include
Financial Services, Government,
Software, Logistics, Retail,
Manufacturing, Other
15.60%
27.66%
36.17%
13.48%
7.09%
Number of COBOL lines Vs. Financial Services Industry
< 1M
1-10M
>10M to 100M
>100M to 1B
> 1B
Survey Results:

12. COBOL Continuance
58% say they expect COBOL
applications to remain in place
for at least five years
55% in Financial Services
expect COBOL applications to
remain in place for at least ten
years
5.67%
18.44%
20.57%
55.32%
Expected Continuance Vs. Financial Services Industry
< 2 yrs
2-5yrs
6-10yrs
>10yrs
Survey Results:

13. More market data…
• Established Market Research agency
Vanson Bourne ran a wider survey,
across hundreds of respondents from
40 countries.
• They found even more COBOL out
there – 800Bn lines
• Over half have COBOL on 2 major
platforms (not just the mainframe)
• 92% of respondents say that their
organization’s COBOL applications are
strategic.

14. COBOL – ready for
tomorrow
Ongoing vendor investments mean COBOL
supports / works with –
• IMS, VSAM, DB2, IDMS, Datacom, Oracle,
SQLServer, PostgreSQL…
• z/OS, Linux (SLES, RHEL, Ubuntu et al.), AIX,
OS/400, Windows, Solaris, HP/UX, Unixware…
• AWS, Azure, GCP, .NET, JVM, VMWare, Docker,
Kubernetes…
• Microservices, OO, API, SOA, Web Services…
• Visual Studio, VSCode, Eclipse, Che…

15. COBOL - for the next
generation
•
•
•
•
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

16. Learn More
Live delivery of this presentation at the Open Mainframe Summit (Sept 2022)
• https://youtu.be/guZe2qq98f0
Open Mainframe Project Survey
• Special Report: COBOL Survey Results Prove Pervasiveness, Value and a Bright Future |
TechChannel
• Derek Britton on the Language and Application of COBOL | TechChannel
Unconscious Bias in Tech
• IT’s Fixed View Needs Fixing | Micro Focus Blog
Micro Focus Survey
• How much COBOL is really out there? (brighttalk.com)
COBOL 60th Anniversary White Paper
• COBOL at 60 – a living legend