It Takes 2 to Tango – and deliver a great solution for COBOL developers

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A delightful development duo

Whether you’re an avid fan of ABC’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’ television program or a novice dance enthusiast, all can appreciate the complexity and intricacy required to deliver a repeated and flawless team dance performance. It’s not easy and requires long hours of practice, constant communication and a shared commitment to perfection. This winning combination is not exclusive to professionals within the dance industry. It happens all across the software industry too! Take for example, the latest team collaboration between two industry veterans – Microsoft and Micro Focus.

Perfect harmony: Microsoft and Micro Focus

These software organizations have been on the scene for quite some time – established brands in their own right and each with a very loyal following. Microsoft of course synonymous with its flagship operating system environment – Windows and its very popular development environment, Visual Studio. Micro Focus, considered by many, ‘the COBOL company’ and staunch supporters of all things Mainframe. Perhaps initially considered awkward dance partners by some, but actually the combination couldn’t be better for their shared customers.

This is best evidenced by their most recent performance. On August 20, Micro Focus announced its latest support for Microsoft’s next generation development platform, Visual Studio 2015. Through its long standing membership within the Visual Studio Integration Program, Micro Focus worked directly with Microsoft dev teams to streamline its product including code design and dev efforts, delivering a result that will beg an encore performance from the COBOL and .NET development community.

The Mozart of COBOL development tools

Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015, puts the power of industry standard development tools directly into the hands of the COBOL developer. By moving the COBOL language into VS2015, COBOL development has never been faster, more productive or easier than it is right now. Whether you’re maintaining sixty-year old code or modernizing today’s COBOL applications to embrace Mobile, Cloud, .NET, or Java technologies, Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015 equips the dev team to deliver that memorable AppDev performance that the business wants to see.

For those that want to dive into the details of Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015, take a look at this short 20-minute video or even the latest features list. But if you’re looking for key highlights, here’s what to expect from this latest offering:

• The very latest in COBOL language integration within Visual Studio and .NET

• Support for both native and managed application code development allowing you to extend your existing COBOL applications

• A unified toolset for the .NET developer, making COBOL accessible alongside C#, Visual Basic and other modern languages

• COBOL development and deployment support for Windows 10, .NET 4.6 and Azure platforms.

There’s a wealth of new capability provided in this new Visual COBOL release and it’s all thanks to great development teamwork within Micro Focus and Microsoft.

Whether you’re a COBOL developer that’s searching how to best maintain existing applications or a .NET developer wanting to connect COBOL systems to new technologies, Visual COBOL for Visual Studio 2015 is worth a closer look.

A development collaboration continues to resound into the future

So, will this latest dev collaboration between Micro Focus and Microsoft be the last? Unlikely. As organizations (and technology) continue to evolve, new consumer demands will drive the need for new tech requirements and new solutions. Particularly in support of trusted (everyday) COBOL systems such as banking, insurance and government applications, developers need the right tools to maintain and modernize these apps. I would expect an encore performance in the near future. Plus, media rumor has it that VSNext development is already underway.

If you’d like to try Visual COBOL out for free then please follow this link, or find out more on the Micro Focus YouTube channel playlist.