04/21/2020

Your Digital Infrastructure Shouldn't Be Playing Catch-up

You need a plan for technical debt

If you have a piece of gadgetry or infrastructure under your control, you do not want to find yourself in the situation Phil Murphy did earlier this month.

Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, found himself having to name-drop a supposed “dead programming language” at a news conference. That language, COBOL, is so old that when it was first put into use, individual hard drive platters were 24 inches in diameter—twice the size of a vinyl record. (Today, they’re generally 3.5 inches in diameter, the size of a drink coaster—if that.)

But Murphy’s state suddenly needed a lot of help with it, because New Jersey’s unemployment systems rely on COBOL. And unemployment was skyrocketing in a freak, once-in-a-lifetime economic shift caused by COVID-19.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.