Want in on an amazing fact?

Eighty percent of the world’s daily business transactions rely on a 59-year-old programming language called Cobol, short for “Common Business Oriented Language.” Global commerce depends so much on Cobol that if its’ 220 billion lines of installed code were mysteriously erased business would be catapulted back to the “B-Commerce” era.

As in “barter.”

While the pivotal importance of Cobol is clear, its’ image among CIOs is a murky mash-up between Rodney Dangerfield and Mark Twain: it earns little respect as a strategic asset, even among ardent supporters; and reports of its impending death are exaggerated, with even staunch critics claiming Cobol could be operational deep into the 2030 decade.

What accounts for the longevity of Cobol?

As Scott Colvey, a writer for The Guardian wrote in 2009, “Cobol is to business what the combustion engine is to motoring: it has been around so long, and installed in so many places, that doing something different would be impossibly costly.”

If you run hardware long enough, it breaks. If you run software long enough, it works. Cobol works. As the CIO of a Fortune 350 firm who requested anonymity because he didn’t want to be associated with a story about Cobol, told me, “Cobol is the most extraordinarily efficient programming language ever written.”

“Cobol is alive and well,” says Steven A. Mills, IBM senior vice president and group executive, Systems and Software. He should know. Decades after journalist Stewart Alsop predicted the last mainframe would be unplugged, over 20,000 mainframe computers, 49% of them from IBM, remain tethered to their power sources. Most running Cobol.

But the technological health of Cobol is not its’ biggest future challenge. As hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomer tech workers with Cobol experience retire, and younger workers prefer to code in Java and C#, the future of Cobol is very human.

Cobol needs more mechanics.

One of Cobol’s most senior mechanics is Edmund Lalli, a 73-year old senior systems programmer with AriFleet. Mr.Lalli, who wrote his first line of Cobol in 1964, says “it is understandable that younger people are attracted to the newer languages, but they should also learn Cobol. I worry about a tipping point in five years where the number of Cobol programmers drops precipitously.”

That tipping point doesn’t worry David Dischiave, associate professor and director of Global Enterprise Technology, Syracuse University, who says, “I don’t buy into the idea that there is a shortage of Cobol programmers. If there is a shortage, why aren’t employers responding to my calls to get jobs for majors with Cobol experience? What employers do, rather than what they say, matters most.”

According to Dr.Leon Kappelman, professor of Information Technology at the University of North Texas, Dallas employers are doing a lot of “doing”. “Four years ago,” he says, “local Fortune 500 employers encouraged the university to offer Cobol courses. Now, graduates who take Cobol electives earn starting salaries of $75,000 compared to starting salaries of $62,500 for those who did not.”

A review of the major job posting sites underscores Professor Dischiave’s claim: while it is easy to find thousand of Java job postings, it is hard to find more than 300 Cobol jobs on any site.

That makes sense to Rick Mears, Senior Vice President/CIO at Owens Minor who says, “am I ever going to post a job to hire a dedicated Cobol programmer? Probably not. But we are always looking for candidates with Cobol skills. My team’s job is to grow the business. If that requires a Cobol rewrite, we all jump in and wash the windows.”

Steven Haindl, senior vice president and CIO for Arifleet, agrees. “It is important our staff be proficient in multiple programming languages, including Cobol, in order to have a deeper understanding of the business as it exists today, and more important, what it might look like tomorrow.”

Supporting multiple languages worries Syracuse's Mr. Dischiave. “Mixing the natural business language of Cobol with newer languages is a nightmare waiting to happen. Why? Because the programming difficulty of the newer languages can lead to sloppy coding.” Edmund Lalli agrees, claiming, “programs like C#, with its reliance on complex symbols, are harder to understand.”

Is a pending Cobol skills gap fact or fiction?

David Eddy, an industry analyst, says “the approaching Baby Boomer Cobol retirement brain drain is going to make Y2K look simple.” But Don Resnik, program manager for IBM’s Academic Initiative, disagrees. “Every 10 years a Cobol skills crisis arises. Most CIOs are resourceful enough to attract, train or source for needed Cobol expertise. The more important issue going forward is that Cobol continue to be an essential component of enterprise computing strategies.”

Alberto Ruocco, vice president and CIO for American Electric Power, is in sync with Mr.Resnik’s observation. The company is implementing a multi-faceted enterprise computing approach that supports the firm’s Cobol code base. Mr.Ruocco says, “it is strategically important to extend the professional life of Cobol-trained staff with programs that accelerate Cobol knowledge transfer.” Mr. Eddy is wary of most Cobol knowledge transfer programs, which he observes, “are usually four years into a two year project.”

So what is the future of Cobol?

When asked, Mr.Ruocco framed it succinctly, “Cobol is dead. Long live Cobol.”