70% of the world's data is processed by COBOL

The average American interacts with a COBOL program 13 times a day

55 average age of a COBOL programmer
70% of universities surveyed say they don’t include COBOL in Curriculum
18 COBOl rank in TIOBI Index of popular programming languages

COBOL

Skill Gap

70% of the transaction systems around the world run on Cobol (Gartner report)
200 billion lines of COBOL code in use (Microfocus report)
1.5 billion lines of new COBOL code are added to live systems every year

Problems

It is hard to find new people with Cobol knowledge. Cobol training for non-Cobol programmers are expensive and adds additional time till the new employees become productive.

Cobol compiler needs to be licensed, which is significant part of license costs.

Migrating to new HW is risky and the current compiler might not even support, so the compiler might needs to be upgraded, which creates additional risk.

Our Solution

Convert the legacy source codes to another, proven, more supported programming language.

Problems

How could we migrate our code base from Cobol to C?

I have a lot of Cobol programmers with knowledge in our current solution. How will the conversion affect my team? How much training do I need to give them or do I need to hire C developers to build up a new team?

I don’t know what will happen with the functionality and performance?

My developers said it is risky, because C uses different data types, syntaxes and if we migrate, the comments in the code will also be lost.

Our Solution

The converted source codes resembles the Cobol syntax, so minimal training is required for COBOL programmers, while new C programmers can join the team in parallel. The program flow, data structures and comments remain as is.

After the conversion, the same functionality is assured running with better performance (based on the projects we have delivered so far).

The conversion is modular. United Consult can convert part of the solution, which then can integrated to the rest of the legacy code, opens the possibility for a PoC/Pilot and testing.

United Consult ensures that your intellectual property (business logic) is secured. Using secure channels for communication and limiting the personals accessing the code.

Project Planning

Discovery
Project Management
Contracting
COBOL Code Delivery
Env Setup Convert Code
Deliver C
Testing
Go Live
Post Go-Live Support

Pricing

  • Projects are priced based on the number of code lines.
  • Only non-empty lines are counted in the cobol and generated domain/data definition files.
  • United Consult can provide a simple unix script to count the related lines in the project.

Results

20% performance improvement
Cutting license costs &
Cutting SW maintenance and development costs
Migration to modern platforms

Why United Consult?

United Consult converted Cobol source codes to C source codes for enterprises in the last 7 years. All projects were successful, our part delivered on time without major incidents or issues. The solutions are still in production since the conversion.

  • Professional staff with deep knowledge of COBOL2C
  • Customizable tool
  • Keeping commitment
  • Giving turnkey solution
  • Transparent managable TCO
  • Proven references with corporations

Happy customers

Converted 700k LOCs: Billing and AR systems to C, saving significant license costs
Converted 1m LOCs: Full Billing and Customer Care system to be able to migrate into Linux
Converted 700k LOCs: COBOL codes of Billing and AR systems to C
Converted 1,5 m LOCs: Billing and AR, Rater, AC

United Consult

It is not just about bringing over 20 years of experience and outstanding knowledge of 300 senior consultants to your company. What really matters for us is to make a hit with your IT projects by applying missing key competencies, experienced specialists and extra resources to your team.

We all provide outstanding help achieving greatness including Design, Architecture, Implementation and Test of various products and solutions. Over the years we have been focusing on Telecommunication, Financial, Healthcare IT and Energy industries to equip these businesses with Software Development and Operation, Business Intelligence, DWH, Project Management, Business Analysis and Testing.

In the time of rapidly changing environments we understand the importance of nonstop knowledge development and our colleagues are up to these challenges by excelling in the latest, most innovative technologies as well such as our region leading contribution with Salesforce, and Cloudera.

Contact us for more information on COBOL conversion to C!