Monday 15 March 2010
The problem is that the speed and agility we’ve achieved in the domain of “apps” hasn’t crossed over into the domain of “ops,” which is where application value is realized. This is because of a longstanding “deployment gap” that exists between apps and ops. At its most basic level, this gap is a result of conflicting motivations. Apps is about speed, while ops is about control. Apps folks focus on delivering solutions to the lines of business as rapidly as possible. Ops folks focus on operating stability, compliance, and cost control through standardization and stringent change management. The gap between them can inhibit business responsiveness, delay deployments and cause organizations to miss opportunities. It can take months and sometimes even years to deploy an enterprise application - and this stands in the way of business value.
Application virtualization can close the deployment gap by separating applications from their operating infrastructure. The virtualized application contains just enough operating system (JeOS), databases, and middleware required to run the software in production. These bits travel with the application package and allow it to run as an image on any operating infrastructure without any manual setup, tuning, configuration or certification. Suddenly, the deployment gap disappears, applications are set free, and deployment cycles are compressed from months to minutes. This approach closes the deployment gap, finally aligning apps and ops by combining speed and flexibility with control and predictability. It becomes the bridge between apps and ops - and the bridge between application innovation and the realization of business value.
THE 50 YEAR OLD programming language COBOL is set to make a comeback, according to SD Times.
A survey by Micro Focus claimed that the average American still interacts with a COBOL program 13 times a day. That includes ATM transactions, ticket
purchases and telephone calls.
What has happened is that many COBOL applications have been wrapped with .NET, where it competes better against Windows applications.
Many outfits that are running COBOL software really don’t need to upgrade it, as it works nicely within the new frameworks. There are apparently shedloads of
open sauce compilers that can make COBOL work just fine in Linux environments.
COBOL has been installed in many legacy systems, particularly in the financial markets, and it has remained a steady source of income for aging programmers.
However, the move towards cloud computing also means that COBOL could be with us for another 50 years.
Drake Coker, chief technologist for application development at Micro Focus, said that the future of COBOL may also lie in the cloud. Currently there are web
applications written in COBOL, and there are even graphical applications programmed in COBOL as well.
He said that any significant technology with substantial business value has been layered into the language at some point.
Coker said that he was currently looking at what has to happen to put COBOL applications into the Cloud.
