Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services To Run Cobol

I cannot remember the last time I worked on Cobol but I know there are lots of systems that still rely on this archaic technology. Microsoft Azure allows applications and development platforms to run in the cloud which include non-Microsoft platforms like Eclipse and yes, even Cobol.

Mark Haynie who is the Vice-President of Product Solutions at Micro Focus has a product called Microsoft Focus Enterprise Cloud Services which allows running Cobol transactions to run easily in the cloud. In Mark's question and answer article from DDJ,

Q: A recent player in the cloud computing arena is Microsoft's Azure. Can you tell us a bit about it and how it fits in with COBOL, if at all?

A: We worked with Microsoft for months preparing for the Microsoft Azure platform, announced in October 2008. At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Micro Focus demonstrated a managed .NET version of a COBOL accounting transaction running in the Azure development fabric where the COBOL keyed sequence dataset was stored under SQL Data Services. This was demonstrated after Micro Focus and Microsoft made a joint announcement on July 2, 2008, laying out our plans for a full .NET implementation of our runtime. The other big advantage is that Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services is cloud-agnostic. Just as Micro Focus Server (the COBOL, CICS, JCL, IMS, VSAM, DB2 compatibility layer) has run on Windows, UNIX and Linux for years, we are now bringing the same level of portability to Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2 and other public clouds.

Even before the launch of Windows Azure, it is obvious that players are moving into this space in preparation for a possible huge growth. Even if Microsoft is late in the game, they are still Microsoft and their strategy has always been to copy their competitors, make it better and sell cheap.

Continue reading the full article here.

The whitepaper for Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services is here.

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