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FarCenter

(19,429 posts)

8. Cobol is mostly maintenance of old applications running on mainframes

Reply to Bayard (Reply #5)

Sat Mar 3, 2018, 08:42 AM

Mar 2018

So you need to know the whole IBM mainframe software stack, not just Cobol language.

It's been awhile, but the strategy seemed to be to send this work to India, where outsourcing companies were training mainframe programmers.

By outsourcing the maintenance of these systems, it was easier to replace and shut them down because you didn't have US employees to fire. Instead, you hired new staff with training in the new technology to build the replacement applications.

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