Rocket ACUCOBOL things we're proud of this month
Hi everyone,
Welcome to Rocket® ACUCOBOL Fuel, your monthly source for all things COBOL. In this issue, you’ll learn about the Technical Debt Management tools, Rocket COBOL Analyzer, and the upcoming webinar on ACUCOBOL data modernization.
A 5-Step Recipe for Technical Debt Management
What if all the industry noise around technical debt is missing your organization’s greatest opportunity? Every IT leader feels the silent drag: legacy code that slows down innovation, rising operational costs, and talent tied up maintaining what’s already there. But what if you stopped viewing technical debt as an immovable anchor, and started treating it as a roadmap for strategic modernization?
The technical debt management market is rapidly evolving, and so is the conversation. In fact, Gartner® has just issued its first Magic Quadrant™ for technical debt management tools and named Rocket Software a Challenger with solutions including Rocket COBOL Analyzer.
Below, you’ll find a practical, step-by-step recipe for leaders who want to manage technical debt as an asset for progress, not just a problem to patch.
Step One: Illuminate the Debt. Start with Discovery
You cannot reduce what you cannot see. In large, decades-old mainframe environments, complex dependencies and undocumented workarounds are the norm, not the exception. Before you move toward modernization, full visibility is critical.
Step Two: Map Technical Debt to Business Impact
Not all technical debt is urgent or harmful. A rarely touched, stable piece of COBOL is low risk; an inefficient module that consumes excessive CPU and fails compliance checks is a top priority.
Step Three: Modernize Incrementally. Not All or Nothing
Sustainable modernization rarely happens in a single sweeping move. For many enterprises, the safer path is to break technical debt into manageable areas, prioritize based on risk and value, and remediate in ways that minimize disruption
Step Four: Prevent Tomorrow’s Debt While Securing Today
Addressing yesterday’s debt is necessary, but preventing the next wave is essential. As you refactor and modernize, new risks can be introduced if governance and security are not baked in.
Step Five: Institutionalize Debt Management as a Continuous Discipline
Technical debt management should not be limited to a one-time assessment or crisis-driven clean-up. It becomes more effective when it is operationalized as an ongoing discipline across architecture, development, operations, and business stakeholders.
Read the full article and let us know in the comments if you have any tech debt management questions.
How to Unlock ACUCOBOL® Data and Innovate Faster
Join our upcoming webinar on July 30 at 10 a.m. ET / 3 p.m. GMT. You’ll discover practical approaches such as SQL-based access, data virtualization, APIs, and incremental modernization strategies that reduce risk while delivering immediate value. Through live demos, you will see how to:
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Access ACUCOBOL data from a modern web application using Rocket® AcuXDBC®
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Seamlessly connect ACUCOBOL data to BI, analytics, cloud, and AI platforms
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Manage structured data alongside documents such as PDFs, images, and Office files, and expose them to other applications
We’ll wrap up with a short ACUCOBOL quiz and giveaways from Rocket Software.
Have questions or suggestions for future Rocket COBOL Fuel newsletters? Please share your feedback in the comments.
