Close the Application Knowledge Gap

Exponentially improve
developer productivity on the mainframe

Reduce your software risks and improve developer productivity with an industry-changing AI.

Legacy mainframe systems and software bedrock many of our most trusted institutions, including government services, finance and banking, healthcare, and insurance. In a substantial number of cases, the expert developers that created and maintained these systems and software are retiring without a supporting workforce to replace them.

When those experienced engineers depart your business, the developers that replace them must acquire the same application knowledge through training, mentorship, and on-the-job programming. This exercise introduces several material business concerns.

COBOL Colleague interprets source code computation and converts it into concepts so software developers don't have to unearth the previous developers' intent encoded in the software to find potential bugs. Developers describe the behaviors that need change to Colleague's collaborative Active Agent, and it quickly guides them to that precise area of code.

By allowing companies to focus developers on what brings the most value — making code changes — COBOL Colleague exponentially improves software development productivity and makes new developers 7x more effective.

Mitigate reputational risks

The average mainframe outage costs upward of $5 million per hour, and a single compliance violation can cost upward of $70 million.

To avoid modernizing applications, databases, and systems that run well in their current states, we've seen entire COBOL procedures duplicated in source code to facilitate small capability changes. The reason is the uncertainty about the code logic and the fear of making changes with unpredictable and risky impacts. The result of such changes is increased uncertainty, which magnifies risk over time.

Not only is making unpredictable and risky changes bad for the bottom line, system-breaking changes can also have a sizable impact on your company’s image.

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Not properly mitigating the substantive reputational risks associated with many code changes can have a catastrophic impact. Since COBOL Colleague knows more about your business applications than all of the developers who ever passed through your doors, the innovative tool empowers organizations to anticipate failures, plan for recovery, and avoid disaster.

Use Case: Fix defects in minutes
CIOs spend 80% of their budgets and resources keeping their legacy applications alive — this is risky business. When something goes wrong, COBOL Colleague ensures there is no need to worry. With our solution, new developers are instantaneously able to efficiently find potential bugs, effectively repair the defects and know they are delivering the right solution — every time.

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Enhance application expertise

COBOL-proficient developers are aging or moving on. When these subject-matter experts depart, vital application knowledge leaves with them. Although COBOL can be simple and straightforward to learn, understanding large and complex applications with tens of millions of lines of code is not. In fact, it can take as long as two years to become proficient with such applications, while the adoption cycle for COBOL Colleague is roughly 10 minutes.

By enabling developers new to mainframe applications to be productive on their first day — with no required help from subject-matter experts — COBOL Colleague empowers programmers to analyze and understand only the relevant lines of code pre-gleaned from the millions of lines of code, effortlessly.

With COBOL Colleague, new developers interact and discover with the tool’s virtual, cognitive agent, collaborate in familiar ways, unwind spaghetti code, isolate defective code, and kill off dead code.

Use Case: Modernize with ease
Before establishing an application modernization strategy, you strive to understand every system function and dependency. COBOL Colleague unravels complex code and isolates business use cases to facilitate architecture decisions and transformation.

Accelerate development productivity

Large systems frequently include millions of lines of code with interdependencies that multiply the complexity, slowing human comprehension and making change more difficult than it needs to be. Before making material changes, developers must spend about 80% of their time searching through, reading, and trying to understand code.

COBOL Colleague understands antiquated programming languages like COBOL in the same manner that developers do, providing deep insights into the programs and unearthing knowledge encoded into the software over the last 50-plus years to accelerate developer productivity.

Regulatory violations in the middle of the night? Accounts not settling? With COBOL Colleague’s knowledge comes power.

Let your developers work with COBOL Colleague to isolate defects and focus on making the code changes that drive the most value for your organization.

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Next time one of your mission-critical applications needs to be changed, COBOL Colleague empowers your team to estimate perfectly and execute ahead of schedule. The tool’s application insights can increase developer productivity by more than 7 times (700%). Even better, the tool is always available, it never forgets, and it never walks out the door.

Use Case: Change code with confidence
CIOs with legacy applications must deliver new features and applications at market speed to keep pace with nimble competitors. COBOL Colleague improves business agility by increasing productivity and freeing developers to build new functionality.

"Knowledge is leaving the building and no documentation is left behind.
It seems like this is starting to be a common problem around the world."

Bill Hinshaw
COBOL Cowboys

Propel the maintenance, evolution, and transformation of your programs with COBOL Colleague

Get a peek into the future of AI-assisted software development!