Veryant has today announced its vCOBOL Enterprise platform for the migration of legacy COBOL applications off of IBM mainframes as part of a strategic set of product launches designed to address cost-cutting, consolidation and operational effectiveness initiatives. With an optimized compiler and COBOL-to-Java runtime technology, vCOBOL Enterprise supports transitions from the mainframe to more affordable UNIX, Linux and Microsoft Windows systems by preserving business logic developed in long-standing COBOL programs.
The company says that using its approach to transform legacy assets maximizes the value of existing resources and significantly lowers total cost of ownership. Gartner analyst Dale Vecchio has said that re-hosting mainframe COBOL workloads is a low-cost and immediate modernization alternative for many organizations, with reduced IT spending typically occurring within one to three years of migration.
"Overall IT modernization may take several years, but re-hosting code to lower cost platforms can save costs and help pay for subsequent modernization activities," commented Vecchio. "Rehosting also enables companies to leverage their COBOL skills and modernize, as appropriate, on newer, distributed platforms," said Vecchio.
Veryant’s COBOL technology utilizes an ANSI-compliant compiler to translate COBOL source code into Java classes and the company says that this fosters ongoing COBOL application maintenance and modernization. COBOL itself is argued to provide a portable and extensible alternative for distributed COBOL apps running on platforms such as Micro Focus ACUCOBOL-GT and RM/COBOL.
Veryant has designed its latest offering around the process of shifting much of the ‘heavy lifting’ of operational analysis and execution instructions typically performed by alternative COBOL platforms during runtime, into its vCOBOL Compiler. In this scenario, vCOBOL technology is said to make optimal use of memory access and is tightly integrated with UniKix Mainframe Rehosting software from Clerity Solutions, delivering a proven and scalable platform to re-host mission-critical online and batch mainframe
