May 21, 2020

Education is vital to legacy applications’ future – podcast

May 21, 2020

By Todd Erickson

Educating young developers about the importance of legacy software applications, and building the tools needed to connect them with modern technologies are the keys to combining old-school reliability and new-school engineering say Bill and Eileen Hinshaw of COBOL Cowboys.

If you've followed the stories about the computer-system meltdowns brought about by the overwhelming demand for government financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic, then you've probably read about COBOL Cowboys.

The Hinshaw's founded the company to bring together experienced programmers and organizations that lack the expertise needed to fix and maintain their legacy applications.

When the system failures started, government officials were quick to blame their back-end mainframe applications, just as they did during the Y2K crisis. However, those same officials were forced to backtrack when Bill and others revealed that the mainframe applications were fine – it was the agency's infrastructure and front-end systems that caused the problems.

Bill and Eileen have done a number of interviews about the system failures, but now they want to talk about moving forward to ensure that these legacy systems are updated using modern technologies, so they don't get blamed for the next computer catastrophe.

That's where education and better tools come into play. Bill and Eileen say the good that's come from our current situation has been the increased public and industry awareness of how important legacy systems are to industries and companies around the world.

Their goal is to educate young software developers on the advantages of mainframe systems so more programmers will be interested in working with them and will replenish the declining workforce.

Learn more about the COBOL Cowboys and how critical mainframe applications are to the world in this Phase Change podcast.

Todd Erickson is a Technology Writer at Phase Change Software. You can reach him at terickson@phasechange.ai.

February 11, 2019

Phase Change CEO Steve Bucuvalas featured on the InfluenceNow! podcast

February 7, 2019

by Todd Erickson1

Phase Change’s Inventor, Founder, and CEO, Steve Bucuvalas, was featured in the January 31, 2019, episode of the InfluenceNow! podcast, hosted by Justin Craft2.

The InfluenceNow! podcast highlights startups, exceptional business influencers, and ideas from a variety of industries that influence the world.

Steve and Justin discussed how Phase Change and the technology behind Mia, the first cognitive agent for software development, became a reality.

The interview begins with Steve describing his career leading technology and artificial intelligence (AI) groups in financial services and insurance companies, and his subsequent entrepreneurial career starting and selling two different companies. He tells the story of how a single conversation with the buyer of his second company led to his interest in applying AI technology to the problem of software-development productivity.

At the closing, the buyer said to me, 'What's wrong with you guys in software? AI has changed financial services extraordinarily - increased our productivity 100 times,' which is accurate. 'Why can’t you do that with your own industry?'

That moment led Steve to research the barriers to applying AI to software development, and the development of the human-centric principles that led to the creation of the Mia cognitive agent.

The podcast continues with Steve and Justin discussing why organizations that rely on applications written in the Common Business-oriented Language (COBOL) programming language are Phase Change’s first target market.

COBOL is this 40-50 year-old language that has atrocious legacy problems. Because the code has been around [so long], it runs 85% of the world’s financial transactions and [there’s] 220 billion lines of [active COBOL] code. The programmers are all in their 60’s and they all want to retire, but they keep getting incentives to work a few more years because no one wants to learn COBOL. In fact, some of the kids in computer science [college courses] have never heard of it.

Justin and Steve conclude the interview discussing the productivity gains realized by Mia and Phase Change’s technology, and when it will be generally available.

To learn more about how Steve and Phase Change Software will radically improve software productivity, watch the podcast video below or listen to the audio podcast.


1Todd Erickson is a tech writer with Phase Change Software. You can reach him at terickson@phasechange.ai.
2Justin Craft is the Founder and CEO of Cast Influence, a Denver, Colorado,-based turnkey marketing agency. Phase Change Software is a client of Cast Influence.

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