COBOL in wider use than previously thought

Use of COBOL in application development has grown at an unprecedented rate, and the COBOL market is three times larger than previously estimated, research released by Micro Focus suggests.

The independent market survey commissioned by the company estimates that more than 800 billion lines of COBOL code are running in production systems and in daily use, far higher than any previous estimates.

For the research, Vanson Bourne asked COBOL-connected architects, software engineers, developers, development managers and IT executives from 49 countries to determine and calculate the volume of COBOL application code running in production systems.

Meanwhile nearly half of respondents to the global survey expect the amount of COBOL in use at their organisation to increase in the next 12 months, and 92% of respondents believe that COBOL remains strategic for their organisation.

The research also indicates that the shift to the cloud is primarily driving increased use of the programming language. When asked about their company’s plans for COBOL and the cloud in 2021, 43% of respondents stated that their COBOL applications did and would support cloud by the end of the year.

Micro Focus director of COBOL product marketing Ed Aire said the findings from the research demonstrate the continued importance of COBOL for application modernisation and business change.

“Eight hundred billion lines of code reinforces the importance, and continued investment, in this most trusted of core business system technologies,” he said.

“This significant volume of COBOL application code in the marketplace represents remarkable value for organisations and requires ongoing investment as part of a larger modernisation strategy.  For IT leaders, supporting core business systems, COBOL application modernisation lies at the heart of digital transformation.”

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