Cobol Software Modernization

Nowadays, billions of lines of code are in the COBOL programming language. The book is an analysis, a diagnosis, a strategy, a MDD method and a tool to transform legacy COBOL into modernized applications that comply with Internet computing, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the Cloud.

Information Technology (IT) makes progresses on an exponential scale while legacy information systems are no longer able to meet the rapidly evolving requirements of critical-information business, because of Internet especially.

Software is no more information processing to serve business. Software must be nothing else than a business booster, a differentiator in a globalized competition.

In this scope, how to then to evolve even replace COBOL applications (the biggest software portfolio of humanity!) to avoid well-known pitfalls: sizeable long-cycle maintenance, uncontrollable adaptation costs, impossible interoperability between new and old software, slow high-end technology adoption and take-up… Modern computing frameworks like .NET, Java EE and the Cloud are evident targets of a COBOL software modernization challenge. This book is blueprint for people in charge of finding solutions when facing this both huge and risky challenge.

Franck Barbier (www.FranckBarbier.com) is both at Netfective Technology as scientific consultant and full Professor in Computer Science at the university of Pau (France). He wrote more than 100 papers and books in French and English, for Hermes Science Publishing especially. He was Director of the CS Research Department of the university of Pau (LIUPPA) from 2000 to 2004; He was Deputy Head of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector at the French Research Agency, a.k.a. ANR (i.e., "French NSF") from 2009 to 2012. He is a recognized expert worldwide in model driven development.

Jean-Luc Recoussine is the general manager of the Blu Age Institute within Blu Age Corporation (a Netfective Technology subsidiary and USA company located in Plano, Texas, USA). Blu Age Institute is a training center for Blu Age products and MDD approach. He moved to the USA in 2011 after spending 6 years in the Blu Age Center of Casablanca (Morocco) where he was member of the founding team and in charge of setting up the Blu Age Support Center. He is an expert in model driven application transformation using Blu Age tools and the methodology.