But due to its declining popularity and the retirement of experienced COBOL programmers, COBOL programs are being migrated to new platforms, rewritten in modern languages or replaced with software packages. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find skilled COBOL programmers to perform program maintenanceĬOBOL applications are often decades old, large, monolithic, and complex, produced from continuous program modifications and enhancements extending over long periods of time.ĬOBOL has been primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.ĬOBOL is still widely used in legacy applications deployed on mainframe computers, such as large-scale batch and transaction processing jobs.Applications need to be adapted for a modern Web-based service-oriented architecture (SOA).This legacy transformation is happening in many industries, such as financial and manufacturing, for two main reasons: There is a growing need to translate legacy mainframe applications from COBOL to a modern programming language. COBOL Conversion: How to ensure your success