Recently, there’s been a lot of news about growth in opportunities for work in the COBOL language, owing to a resurgence of the IBM mainframe platform both to support mission-critical applications in key industries and to take advantage of IBM Z cloud computing capabilities. While IBM Z accounts for the majority of existing COBOL applications, the language is relevant to other platforms, as well.
Historically – if I may use such a word for an industry less than a century old – the computing market has been segmented into more levels than just “micro” and “mainframe.” Mid-sized enterprises have long faced a dilemma: Use relatively inexpensive microcomputer equipment and systems that barely keep up with the company’s demand for computing power, or pay heavily for mainframe systems that have several times more capacity than the company will ever use.
To serve that market, a number of computer companies provided midrange computers.
Most of the media play centers on the big iron – IBM Z – but midrange systems are in the same position today with respect to legacy systems and virtualization, and with respect to the generation of people who have been supporting them going into retirement. Companies have significant investment in and dependency on legacy systems, and the old systems are being modernized and cloud-enabled.
Which programming language do you suppose people used to write most of their applications on midrange systems? You guessed it: COBOL.