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How to Deal with the Legacy Systems Skills Gap

by | Apr 29, 2020

During this coronavirus pandemic, many underlying problems have surfaced. One such issue is the unequal ratio of working COBOL programmers to the number of legacy applications and systems running on COBOL code, still in production today.

In fact, many people are surprised to learn how many mission-critical applications, services, and processes depend on COBOL code that was written decades ago. For example, many state governments, insurance agencies, banks, healthcare systems, and even the IRS rely heavily on mainframes as their systems of record.

In a recent Forbes article, GT Software President, Steve Hassett, illuminates the COBOL talent shortage and offers a blueprint to solve the deep-rooted issues at play.

“Indeed, the solution to this problem has three primary components: new talent, connected mainframes, and better tools. These three horsemen will prevent the impending IT apocalypse,” says Hassett.

After all, this isn’t just an isolated event. IT professionals have been warning about a legacy workforce shortage for years. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to expose underlying issues in our IT infrastructure, will we finally see the bigger picture?

The fact that a dramatic increase in unemployment is overloading State government systems claims points to a bigger problem than a simple skills shortage.

For more than 35 years, GT Software has been helping organizations modernize their legacy systems. We’ve helped global banks connect their mainframe to third-party databases. Without hiring additional staff, they were able to go from proof of concept to production in under two months.

Click here to read the full article.