16 01732 759725 OPINION By Petra Goude, Kyndryl Global Practice Leader for Core Enterprise & zCloud programming languages. A new generation of COBOL experts can use Generative AI to translate COBOL code into languages like Java or C++. In the right hands, GenAI can help organisations to automate the translation process – bringing more consistency and reliability to this otherwise lengthy, complex and labourintensive endeavour. n Generating technical documentation. Experts can also direct GenAI to create technical documentation for legacy COBOL programs. This is critical to mainframe operations, as documentation of essential older code is often scarce or non-existent. That’s a problem when the time comes to modernise IT systems to enable new functions and work with cloud-enabled platforms. n Identifying dependencies. Sorting out the tangled control structure of COBOL systems can pose serious challenges and cause costly delays. Such delays can affect the competitiveness of banks needing to adjust interest rates, for example. GenAI can help developers ‘decompose’ or reverse engineer legacy systems to identify dependencies between different modules and codebases and determine how to modernise more accurately and easily. n Recommending actionable solutions. Generative AI can provide recommendations for updating and improving code quality and architecture. By applying GenAI algorithms to legacy code, programmers can save time and control costs while maintaining, refactoring and re-engineering COBOL-based systems with less effort. n Using AI to unlock more of the mainframe’s potential. By combining human expertise with AI technologies, organisations will accelerate their mainframe modernisation initiatives and make fuller use of their data. COBOL expertise will be the key to understanding a firm’s business logic, while AI will accelerate coding tasks with fewer errors. To maintain business continuity and protect their entrenched IT investments, governments and critical-infrastructure industries must find new ways to get the most out of their mainframes. Lacking their own skilled personnel, these organisations will need trusted partners who bring both technical and business expertise to their projects. Whether it’s optimising existing code, integrating new and legacy systems, strengthening cybersecurity or general maintenance and troubleshooting, the differentiated combination of COBOL expertise and GenAI mastery will make the difference between thriving and merely surviving. Kyndryl is the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider, serving thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries. The company designs, builds, manages and modernises the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. www.kyndryl.com COBOL skills are becoming extinct. That’s bad news for governments, financial services, travel & transportation, telecommunications and other organisations that run their core IT infrastructures on the mainframe. When a consumer applies for government services, makes a card payment or books a trip, they’re used to seamless and trouble-free execution. It just works, which is the beauty of the mainframe. But behind the scenes, the mainframe’s bulletproof reliability and security runs on billions of lines of decades-old COBOL code (or other legacy code such as PL/I and RPG for IBM i systems). And many of the people who can write, repair and update that code are approaching retirement. The foundational relationship of COBOL and other legacy programming languages to newer languages such as Java or C++ is similar to the relationship of Latin to modern Roman languages. The newer languages have their roots in the legacy language. But just because you can speak French doesn’t mean you can decipher the classical texts of Ancient Rome. There needs to be translation, both in text and context. Generative AI (GenAI) can accelerate this process, but it needs guidance and oversight by human experts. So, organisations must take action now as they struggle to populate the COBOL expertise pipeline. Here are five ways that Generative AI can help mitigate the COBOL crisis: n Translating COBOL into more modern AI to play key role in meeting sustainability goals AI is playing a key role in helping organisations achieve their sustainability goals reveals a new study conducted by Ecosystm in collaboration with Kyndryl and Microsoft. Findings from The Global Sustainability Barometer Survey show that over half of UK businesses are using AI to identify opportunities to lower their carbon footprint (53%) and monitor energy usage emissions (51%). Almost half (49%) are using AI to predict future energy consumption based on current data. The report also highlights obstacles to the use of AI, with 47% regarding the integration of AI solutions with existing systems to manage sustainability data as a challenge. To help develop their sustainability capabilities UK organisations are turning to consulting firms (61%) or system integrators (48%) for assistance. A significant percentage are looking at improving their internal capabilities (53%). Overall, the report, From Vision to Impact: The Global Sustainability Barometer, highlights a gap between the aspirations of organisations and their actions. For example, while 74% of UK organisations place a high strategic level of importance on sustainability, to date only 20% have actively integrated sustainability into their strategies and data. And while 92% of UK organisations see technology as key to achieving sustainability goals, less than half (45%) believe they are making full use of IT in their organisations. The main drivers of sustainability in UK organisations are to reduce energy consumption and cost (42%) and to access funding (42%). www.kyndryl.com 5 ways Generative AI can address the COBOL skills crisis Petra Goude
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