Welcome to Visual COBOL 9.0 and Enterprise Suite 9.0, the latest releases delivered as part of our OpenText Cloud Editions (CE) 23.3 innovations, designed to empower the next generation of application developers, while helping IT leaders expand reach and scale of their digital transformation projects and build for the future.
Now available, these new COBOL and mainframe application modernization releases underpin OpenText’s commitment to continuous innovation, enabling our customers to thrive in a world of accelerating change. The releases extend the market-leading capabilities for application modernization with innovative new extensions for the COBOL programming language to help onboard and nurture the next generation of developer talent, alongside new ways to modernize COBOL business logic with Java.
Addressing the COBOL skills gap
Together, Visual COBOL 9.0 and Enterprise Suite 9.0 address the COBOL skills gap concerns expressed by many IT leaders – by educating and supporting the next generation of developers to support today’s COBOL applications. Compared with other video-based offerings, the new COBOL course will enable today’s developers to learn COBOL – in just one day. It’s a game-changer for organizations needing to support and digitize mission-critical core business applications written in COBOL and running on the mainframe. Built to quickly cross-train developers in COBOL, the new Micro Focus™ COBOL Fundamentals course includes video-based on-demand educational materials combined with hands-on exercises using the latest development toolsets, followed by digital certification.
A bright future for COBOL and mainframe modernization
In driving smarter application modernization to achieve better results faster, these latest AMC releases aim to help organizations secure the skills needed to deliver their future digital transformation strategy. OpenText’s investment in nurturing talent will play a critical role in improving recruitment of high-demand skilled COBOL developers. A recent survey revealed 800 billion lines of COBOL code are in production use today. More importantly, 92% of those using COBOL see it as strategic to the business, and 72% believe it must be modernized to support future business plans. Over 80% of the survey respondents believe COBOL will be here for the next decade – if not longer – creating a significant opportunity for the next generation of developers to help existing organizations both maintain and modernize these systems. Read more.
Combined Visual COBOL and Enterprise Suite product highlights include:
- New Micro Focus™ COBOL Fundamentals courseware and digital certification available to customers and the community. Learn COBOL is just one day.
- New COBOL language syntax which enables easier integration with Java and makes COBOL more accessible to the next generation of developers.
- New unit testing tools for mainframe applications enabling adoption of Agile and DevOps practices.
- New Technical preview of Enterprise Analyzer support for Linux platforms and cloud deployment.
- Feature development across all developer toolsets including Visual Studio Code, providing customers with the best experience for enterprise application development.
- Certification and testing across all major platforms and support for new Linux distributions, extending customer choice on and off-cloud.
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