Is COBOL Still the Engine of Financial Applications?

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The author, a Google engineering manager who previously spent over 15 years as a consultant, reflects on unresolved challenges from past projects in which financial clients said COBOL was the only option capable of handling their transaction volume. IBM mainframes running COBOL via CICS are highly efficient but costly, leading smaller fintechs and banks to run COBOL on x86 servers, where throughput drops sharply. Cited AWS and Micro Focus benchmarks show a 16-CPU x86 server reaching about 3,200 transactions per second, with nine servers needed to exceed 4,000. The author plans to test whether a realistic replacement architecture can match these workloads, using a simulated pension fund management business as the case study.

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