COBOL Modernisation:
We Fix It, Then We Get You Off It.

Yes. We have an in-house COBOL developer who works alongside our modern PHP and Laravel team. The critical part of any COBOL migration is extracting and documenting the business logic before rebuilding it, not just rewriting the code. COBOL systems often contain decades of accumulated rules and edge cases that are not documented anywhere except the code itself. We extract that logic carefully before any migration begins.

Because it works. COBOL is extraordinarily stable, handles large batch data processing efficiently, and the systems built on it were engineered to last. The problem is not that the systems are broken. The problem is that the pool of people who can maintain them is shrinking every year, that integrating them with modern infrastructure is increasingly difficult, and that the organisations running them carry a growing risk that is invisible until it is not.

Carefully and in stages. The migration process starts with comprehensive documentation of what the existing COBOL system actually does: every business rule, every data transformation, every exception path. We run the old and new systems in parallel, comparing outputs against identical inputs until we are confident the new system replicates the old one exactly. Only then do we switch.

This parallel running phase is the most important safeguard. It catches edge cases that would only emerge in production if you migrated without it. The time spent in parallel running is not wasted: it is what prevents a critical failure after cutover.

Primarily PHP and Python on LAMP or modern cloud infrastructure, with Laravel for complex application logic and API layers. The target stack depends on what the system needs to do: batch processing pipelines, web interfaces, API integrations, and reporting systems each have different optimal architectures. We recommend the right target technology for the specific system rather than defaulting to a single answer.

The priority is always to migrate to well-understood, widely-supported technology with a large developer pool. The goal is to replace a system that only a small number of people can maintain with one that any competent developer can work on.

It depends significantly on the size and complexity of the system. A focused batch processing pipeline replacement can be completed in 12 to 20 weeks. A large enterprise system with multiple interconnected modules, complex business logic, and significant historical data will take longer.

We scope carefully before committing to a timeline, because the worst outcome in a COBOL migration is a rushed cutover that loses business logic or produces incorrect results. A migration that takes a few weeks longer than planned is far less costly than discovering a logic error in production.

This is normal and expected. Most COBOL systems have business logic that exists only in the code, with no documentation, no living developer who remembers why it was written that way, and no test suite to validate against. Our COBOL developer's job is to read and understand that code, document what it does, and surface anything ambiguous to the stakeholders who need to make a decision about how it should behave in the new system.

We do not assume. If something in the code is unclear and the ambiguity could affect the business outcome, we raise it before proceeding. Nothing gets assumed away.

Yes. In many cases the right approach is to build API wrappers or middleware around the existing COBOL system so that modern applications can interact with it safely while the full migration is planned and executed. This reduces risk, allows the migration to be phased, and means the business does not have to wait for the full migration to complete before getting some of the benefits of modernisation.

It also reduces the pressure to rush the migration, which is one of the main causes of COBOL migration failures.