Some thoughts about COBOL projects' major role in software development exports of India in 1970s & 1980s

Last updated on 22nd Dec. 2020

Minor update on 1st Sep. 2021

This is a somewhat informal and rather quickly written post, capturing some content of mine from a recent email exchange, in a slightly edited form, along with some additional info. I picked up while putting up this post. The reason I decided to put up this post is that when I searched for such information on the Internet I found rather limited info. So I felt it may be appropriate to put it up as an informal post which perhaps may be of some use to some researchers and writers on history of Indian software industry in the 1970s & 1980s, who land up on this post, say via Google Search.

I think applications development work for foreign customers done in COBOL typically, in Datamatics for sure as I was employed there, and perhaps in TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), TBL/TUL (Tata Burroughs Ltd. which later became Tata Unisys Ltd.) and Patni Computers - the big guys in mid 1980s, was common in SEEPZ. TCS got connected to Burroughs customers due to their Burroughs tie-up and got USA export software development contracts/projects in 1970s itself.

From https://sites.google.com/site/saravanamaneeian/tcs "TCS' first software export project was undertaken in 1974 when it converted the Hospital Information System from Burroughs Medium Systems COBOL to Burroughs Small Systems COBOL. This project was carried out entirely in TCS Mumbai on the ICL 1903 Computer. A team of more than 12 people delivered this project to their first US based customer, and thus the Indian Software Export Industry was born. By mid 1970s it had spread its reach to Britain, Switzerland and the Netherlands. In 1979, TCS was the first Indian software firm to open overseas office in New York.[1]

In 1980, TCS and a sister Tata firm accounted for 63 % of the Indian software industry exports, $4 million shared by 21 firms. New players like Datamatics, Patni Computer Systems started to evolve in 1980’s. In 1984, TCS set up its office in Export Processing Zone – Mumbai."

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I am quite sure that significant part of the mid 1970s TCS export projects mentioned above would have been in COBOL (on Burroughs computers mostly, I guess) but I was not able to get references on the Internet to support that view.

Datamatics had the Wang Laboratories connection and so got customized COBOL application development projects for Wang customers (who had Wang computers). I had joined Datamatics Consultants in SEEPZ, Bombay/Mumbai in March 1984 as a trainee programmer. In 1984 itself, as soon as I finished 4 month training perhaps in month of July or so, I started developing COBOL programs in SEEPZ for an Arab (Gulf) nation customer who had Wang computers. I am quite sure such projects were going on at least from 1983 in Datamatics, if not earlier. Note that prior to my 'trainee batch' of around 18 persons all of whom were trained in COBOL programming, besides some introductory exposure to computer fundamentals and System Analysis, there had been previous such 'trainee batches' going back at least one year, if not more. I am quite sure TBL then would have had significant number of Burroughs COBOL projects (as TBL had been spun out of TCS).

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Some info about COBOL from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL is given below (I was somewhat surprised but not too shocked to know that COBOL programming was needed (as modification of existing systems) in this year of 2020 to handle COVID pandemic related stimulus/unemployment benefits in some places in USA) :

By 1970, COBOL had become the most widely used programming language in the world.[76]

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In 1997, the Gartner Group reported that 80% of the world's business ran on COBOL with over 200 billion lines of code and 5 billion lines more being written annually.[104]

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In 2006 and 2012, Computerworld surveys found that over 60% of organizations used COBOL (more than C++ and Visual Basic .NET) and that for half of those, COBOL was used for the majority of their internal software.[9][107]

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Testimony before the House of Representatives in 2016 indicated that COBOL is still in use by many federal agencies.[108] Reuters reported in 2017 that 43% of banking systems still used COBOL with over 200 million lines of COBOL code in use.[109]

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During the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing surge of unemployment, several US states reported a shortage of skilled COBOL programmers to support the legacy systems used for unemployment benefit management. Many of these systems had been in the process of conversion to more modern programming languages prior to the pandemic, but the process had to be put on hold.[111] Similarly, the US Internal Revenue Service scrambled to patch its COBOL-based Individual Master File in order to disburse the tens of millions of payments mandated by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.[112]

[References:]

9. Mitchell, Robert L. (4 October 2006). "Cobol: Not Dead Yet". Computerworld. Retrieved 27 April 2014.

76. Beyer, Kurt (2009). Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262013109. LCCN 2008044229. p. 301.

104. Kizior, Ronald J.; Carr, Donald; Halpern, Paul. "Does COBOL Have a Future?" (PDF). The Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2000. 17 (126). Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 August 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2012.

107. "Cobol brain drain: Survey results". Computerworld. 14 March 2012. Retrieved 27 April 2014.

108. Powner, David A. (25 May 2016). "Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems" (PDF). Government Accountability Office. p. 18. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 June 2016. Retrieved 19 July 2019. Several agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture (USDA), DHS, HHS, Justice, Treasury, and VA, reported using Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL)—a programming language developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s—to program their legacy systems. It is widely known that agencies need to move to more modern, maintainable languages, as appropriate and feasible."

109. "COBOL blues". Reuters. Retrieved 8 April 2020.

111. Lee, Alicia (8 April 2020). "Wanted urgently: People who know a half century-old computer language so states can process unemployment claims". CNN. Retrieved 8 April 2020.

112. Long, Heather; Stein, Jeff; Rein, Lisa; Romm, Tony (17 April 2020). "Stimulus checks and other coronavirus relief hindered by dated technology and rocky government rollout". The Washington Post. Retrieved 19 April 2020.

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The above wiki extracts show how big COBOL has been over the past half century or so, in software development. Some computer scientists may look down on COBOL but good historians of software industry and software world in general, have to give COBOL its due! 

I think that COBOL was really big in 1980s in India, from number of projects that were done in it, not only in Indian software export area but also in Indian domestic market, and the sheer money value associated with such projects. For filesystems, at least in COBOL on Wang VS, we had Sequential files (no random access capability) and Indexed Sequential (ISAM) files (random access capability based on index value). SQL databases were not used in the projects I worked in COBOL in Datamatics in 1984 and 1985 - after that I had migrated to what we in my Datamatics peers group loosely referred to as "systems programming" in languages like 'C' and Wang VS Assembler.

IBM mainframe COBOL with knowledge of CICS was really heavy in demand then for export projects as well as bodyshopping!

I think the histories that I have read about Indian computer industry (latest I browsed through for recent blog posts I put up, was this one: HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN INDIA (1955-2010) by V. Rajaraman (for) IEEE Computer Society, https://ethw.org/w/images/8/87/Rajaraman%2C_V._History_of_Computing_in_India%2C_1955-2010.pdf ) do not capture the big role that COBOL projects played in Indian software export in 1970s and 1980s, both in terms of offshore (in India) development and onsite assignments (including bodyshopping/contracting). Perhaps they look down on COBOL project work as technically primitive and so want to gloss over that part of India's software export history, but then they are not capturing the reality of those days then, both from a total export value perspective as well as number of software developers perspective.

These companies like TCS and Datamatics also had Indian (domestic market) projects for sure. I have worked in 1984-85 in Datamatics Nariman Point data center where I wrote COBOL application programs on Wang computers, catering to Indian clients of Datamatics. So these companies may have used an approach of first imparting COBOL programming expertise in India domestic market projects to freshers and then either using them for export COBOL projects or 'bodyshopping' them. I have no problem with the term 'bodyshopping' :-). We used the term contractors and I think that was common then not only in India but even in UK, USA as they had bodyshopping/contracting companies too - Logica was one that was active in UK in 1985. 

When I was in Brussels, Belgium on a programming assignment in 1985-86 on a C language, Videotex on Wang VS project for Wang International Telecommunications Research Centre (ITRC), Datamatics was executing a big COBOL project for Avon UK. Me and my 2 colleagues from Brussels went to London on two weekends as holiday visits to meet up with the onsite Datamatics folks there and do sightseeing, and they too did likewise visiting Brussels. Avon project of Datamatics was not bodyshopping - it was offshore project execution with some persons onsite, if I recall correctly.

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Readers may want to see my posts about Wang Laboratories and their computers listed below:

*) Chinese-American computer pioneer An Wang (1920-1990) and Wang Laboratories founded by him: some aspects of their history of interest to me - Part 1,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/04/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html , 1st April 2021 (next part link is provided in the post).

*) Some general quotations of An Wang from his book: Lessons: An Autobiography,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/06/some-general-quotations-of-wang-from.html , 30th June 2021.

*) My Wang VS computers software development work including over 30 months of assignments at Wang US & Europe centres in 1980s, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/03/my-wang-vs-computers-software.html , 11th March 2021.

*) Some info. on John Chambers and his association with Wang Laboratories, based on Web articles, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2019/01/some-info-on-john-chambers-and-his.html , 30th Jan. 2019

[I thank Wikipedia and https://sites.google.com/site/saravanamaneeian/tcs, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s) from their website (rather small extract from https://sites.google.com/site/saravanamaneeian/tcs ) on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]