Integrating technology from fifty years ago with the 21st century is no easy task. One couldn’t, for example, sync their iPod with a Gramophone, upload a document to a typewriter or text a friend from a phone box. Yet much of the technology, which underpins today’s business world, is inextricably linked to an innovation that celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year.

On May 28th 1959, a meeting at the Pentagon laid down the guidelines which forms the basis of COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language). While such a prominent building will no doubt have played host to more momentous conferences, few, if any, will have gone on to have such a marked influence upon the future of business technology. Over the following decades, COBOL developed an almost ubiquitous relationship with enterprise IT. As large corporations and government departments increased their reliance on digital information, underpinning the IT infrastructures of virtually every major organization were large, reliable COBOL-based applications.

As a result, today COBOL is everywhere, yet is largely unheard of among the millions of people who interact with it on a daily basis. Its reach is so pervasive that it is almost unthinkable that the average person could go a day without it. Whether using an ATM, stopping at traffic lights or purchasing a product online, the vast majority of us will use COBOL in one form or another as part of our daily existence.

The statistics that surround COBOL attest to its huge influence upon the business world. There are over 220 billion lines of COBOL in existence, a figure which equates to around 80% of the world’s actively used code. There are estimated to be over a million COBOL programmers in the world today. Most impressive perhaps, is that 200 times as many COBOL transactions take place each day than Google searches – a figure which puts the influence of Web 2.0 into stark perspective.

Every year, COBOL systems are responsible for transporting up to 72,000 shipping containers, caring for 60 million patients, processing 80% of point-of-sales transactions and connecting 500 million mobile phone users. COBOL manages our train timetables, air traffic control systems, holiday bookings and supermarket stock controls. And the list could go on.

But what has made COBOL such a success? Why, despite doomsayers confidently predicting its demise for the past 30 years, does it continue to proliferate? The simplest answer to this question is just that: simplicity. Ever since the idea was hatched five decades ago, COBOL aimed to provide a common standard for programmers based on the use of plain English, simplifying coding for developers and businesses alike. COBOL programmers appreciate this, not to mention the fact that it is a better guarantee of employment than almost any other IT specialism.

The versatility of COBOL has also played a part in its abundance and longevity. Applications first developed to run on IBM System 700 mainframes are now being readied to move onto an Amazon or Microsoft cloud computing platform. COBOL’s propensity for modernization is unparalleled, making it not only effective but also cost-effective. In 2009’s turbulent economic climate, modernizing existing COBOL systems is an attractive prospect for CIOs looking to ‘do more with less’.

Perhaps most crucially though, COBOL systems dating back a number of decades still exist today because of the immense investment of hours and resources which have been spent on them during this time. Because of their longevity, these systems have evolved with the business, and become crucial corporate assets in their own right. Given the competitive advantage these bespoke systems can provide, they are far more than just a cost on the balance sheet. Put

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