Two things you thought would never happen at IBM

Posted by Trevor Eddolls on Monday, October 31, 2011 - 257 views

I guess any two pundits sitting in a room together 10 years ago and talking about IBM’s future would have been more likely to predict Star Trek-like beaming technology and computers you could talk to than a mainframe that integrated Windows servers and woman landing the top job at IBM.

And here we are. It’s almost November 2011, and both are about to come to pass.

WAIT! There is more to read… read on »

One firm’s story: The mainframe goes, but Cobol stays behind

Posted by Mike on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 - 344 views

Owens & Minor moves Cobol-based ERP system to x86 server, Windows machines

A lot of Cobol-based applications have a plot line similar to the first Star Trek movie.

In it, the crew of the Enterprise discovers a huge, intelligent cloud they called “V’ger.” It turns out (plot spoiler alert), though, that V’ger was an unmanned spacecraft called Voyager that had been launched from Earth some 300 years earlier and then readapted by alien forces.

That Star Trek movie was released in 1979. The Cobol-based ERP application suite used by Owens & Minor Inc., a medical supply company, began its life in the 1980s as a packaged application. Over time, the company adapted the ERP software to meet its specific needs, creating a highly customized system with 10 million lines of code. (READ MORE)