Why Business Basic and Cobol Users Win During This Economic Crisis

Never in recent decades have companies been so keen as to maintain what they already invested in as in 2009. This is especially true when it comes to information technology infrastructures and software solutions.

Nobody can afford or is willing to implement expensive and risky solutions such as SAP or Exact for example. There are currently tens of thousands of Business Basic and Cobol users in Europe alone. Many of these companies have been approached by and some have been convinced to migrate to ERP solutions such as SAP, Business One, JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, Exact, just to name a few. Of those who did go this way, a vast majority did not achieve the promised savings or returns, if they are still in business. And the worst of all is that there is no way back for those companies that survived the sometimes horrendous implementation investments. Today, such projects get shot down one by one.

Then there are those who wisely didn’t take such leap and maintained what works for them. The low cost and lean structure of their Business Basic (Basis, Thoroughbred, Providex) and Cobol environments are robust most of the times very tailor-made solutions. Yet there remains a need to evolve and address new challenges companies face every day. There are legal requirements that must be met, aka business critical issues; improvements to advance the business, aka business essential issues; and finally ‘wishes’ or nice-to-have’s.

Many of the current Business Basic and Cobol users still mainly use character-based applications, although quite a few have implemented graphic-based interfaces for all or parts of their applications. Often complicated avenues where chosen to accomplish such goals, yet with the fast evolution within technology, today there are very easy and low-cost solutions to achieve such and other goals. To mention only one, Java has allowed excellent open source programming and to sustain proven backbone applications whilst delivering a modern graphical interface to users. But these days there are many more excellent and up-to-date solutions to tackle only those issues that are worth tackling, at low cost and at a pace that the organization can easily absorb. Typically those issues that are considered essential or obligatory (e.g. legal considerations) are addressed in the first wave of implementation changes. Wishes or nice-to-have changes usually are put on the back burner as they do not contribute to immediate improvements of the production process, service or logistics, nor to the bottom-line in a positive way. This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be considered since there may be underlying advantages that have that positive impact sought after in the business essential changes.

Times have never been this busy as in 2009 for the few service providers who support these older technologies and introduce innovative technologies while maintaining what companies have invested in throughout decades. It has become very clear that in times that the economy is strong, we all tend to stray from what works well, misled by wants and desires rather than what is best for the company and its bottom-line. This is very good news for Business Basic and Cobol users today in a market that forces us all to rationally look at what we already have and does the job just fine.