Tell us the truth about ABSA, Maria

[alf101]

We're using COBOL for our Portfolio management system.

[marine1]

Maria choked off Transnet's capex and cut their budgets -now they have to borrow R100bn from the capital markets to get back on track.
She's doing the same to absa. That, and the fact that Barclays considers SA IT people to be backward 3rd world hicks.

I wonder what her package is? Probably millions

[MongooseMan]

Loving the FNB tweet at the bottom.
Good form!

[Shake&Bake]

Loving the FNB tweet at the bottom.
Good form!

Michael Jordaan is a forward thinking bloke.
Been following him for a while.
Funny oke, but also gives good insight and feedback.
Not many CEO's that'll do that.
Pieter Uys and Gian Visser are two others I can think of that I follow that also use the medium to respond to clients.

Though you don't find Michael really getting involved with too many actual client complaints - or from what I've seen anyway.

I don't bank with FNB btw - like it matters

[Mr.Jax]

Gentlemen, this is a prime example of GREED!

Or is there a story behind the story ? Hmmm.....I wonder...

[BGE]

Has ABSA possibly completed migrating away from COBOL?

[Sinbad]

Pieter Uys and Gian Visser are two others I can think of that I follow that also use the medium to respond to clients.

Though you don't find Michael really getting involved with too many actual client complaints - or from what I've seen anyway.

I don't bank with FNB btw - like it matters

He handles it via DM where appropriate.

[chop]

People still use COBOL?

It's used for a lot of core systems where high throughput and stability is required, especially in the banking and insurance industries.

The language and it's tools has also advanced significantly over the years.

[mercurial]

Thanks for the info, guys It's the most I've ever been quoted in a thread

[Johand]

It's used for a lot of core systems where high throughput and stability is required, especially in the banking and insurance industries.

I don't think that is the reason. It is used because it is too expensive to replace / rewrite the code. And because of the link to IBM. There are technologies with much, much higher throughput that is also more stable. The stock exchanges for example have been using Java quite successfully in high-throughput, low-latency, high reliability scenarios.

[hawker]

Quite an interesting thread! Please carry on!

[Sinbad]

I don't think that is the reason. It is used because it is too expensive to replace / rewrite the code. And because of the link to IBM. There are technologies with much, much higher throughput that is also more stable. The stock exchanges for example have been using Java quite successfully in high-throughput, low-latency, high reliability scenarios.

Nope, tibco RV messaging isn't java based Sure some of the producers and consumers may be, but the messaging itself is written in C.

Also, there's very little in distributed systems that can match mainframes for stability and scalability.

[Boksie]

I know COBOL, and I'm not even halfway to retirement or dead or something, as someone mentioned. I just wish I could see these high $$$ jobs being advertised...

[eehellfire]

Meh, a year or so ago everyone hated Standard Bank for mass retrenching. People will forget about this within a couple of months.

Standard Bank handled that really, really badly.
ABSA is probably trying a different approach, although this doesn't seem to be working either

[magneto]

aaaahhh this smack of oversea fidling.. cough cough barcleys ;(.
this first route they use in the UK to cut costs , first peeps to go are the IT department.