On April 15th, 2008 Clerity announced that it entered into an agreement to invest and take controlling interest of
Veryant, a software firm focused on delivering COBOL and Java solutions.
In this edition of
Clerity Community, Clerity’s President Brandon Edenfield answers some commonly asked questions such as why Clerity decided to invest in Veryant and what this investment means for Clerity and Veryant customers.
Why did Clerity invest in Veryant?
Clerity is focused on improving our customers’ cost-per-transaction rates and total cost of ownership. Beyond minimizing disruption and maximizing return during migration projects, Clerity aims to provide an evolutionary path forward to modernize and improve the value of our customers’ business assets on both distributed and legacy platforms. As we looked into the technology and corporate philosophy of Veryant, we saw a strong synergy with their approach to the market.
Veryant’s isCOBOL technology provides a highly-effective, affordable path forward for COBOL-based business applications. With isCOBOL, customers can continue COBOL programming and development while deploying applications in a 100% Java environment. They can also choose to transition fully to Java over time. The possibilities are endless with this approach.
Shops who have migrated or rehosted legacy COBOL workloads can further modernize their applications without the cumbersome integration complexities introduced by other solutions that create bridges to interface COBOL with Java. isCOBOL allows a business to continue leveraging existing COBOL skills for as long as desired, knowing that their compiled executables are now running in a Java Virtual Machine. So work done in isCOBOL integrates natively into a Java implementation, providing a nimble, cost-effective choice for modernization.
Shops moving to a Java-centric architecture for ongoing application development get the best of both worlds too. These customers have existing subject matter experts that know the ins and outs of their existing complex legacy COBOL applications – and these applications are often at the heart of a mission-critical compute environment, managing the most critical business workflows. More often than not, the developers maintaining these applications do not have the time or the skill to move immediately into the world of Java development. Since isCOBOL enables existing COBOL programmers to continue maintaining their key applications in a completely familiar environment, a shop’s COBOL programmers can participate in knowledge sharing with Java developers without losing productivity.
By producing Java that integrates completely into a new environment, a company may then keep some or all of its current COBOL environments and just do new development in Java or gradually transition from COBOL if desired – either way, there is no disruption of ongoing operations. We feel this is a tremendous benefit and sound option for legacy shops who want to move to a Java strategy.
Veryant already had an initial customer base using its technology, so we saw this was a real platform for developing, deploying and evolving business applications. Core isCOBOL components from Veryant like the compiler, debugger and runtime environment are all implemented 100% in Java – so they can rapidly implement new solutions and be highly responsive to customer requests. All traits we value greatly at Clerity as well.
What does this investment mean for Clerity and Veryant customers?
Clerity will continue to focus on providing legacy migration and modernization solutions, while Veryant will market to the COBOL development space and continue evolving its isCOBOL suite of offerings. Going forward, Clerity and Veryant will continue to operate as separate businesses. The existing development, support and services staff of Veryant remains on board, so their current customer and partner base will see no major differences. Adding Clerity’s global support team to the mix and growing Veryant’s U.S. presence will enhance its position as a world-class COBOL provider.
What do you think is unique about isCOBOL technology?
Core isCOBOL components like the compiler, runtime environment and debugger are implemented completely in Java and isCOBOL compiles COBOL code into pure Java class output. This opens the door to rapidly extend applications and add new features through the Java platform. A developer’s life can be greatly simplified with isCOBOL since they can deliver like-for-like functionality and an identical application GUI on any platform without having to maintain multiple code bases. For software vendors distributing applications across multiple platforms this is a big plus.
Does Clerity have any future investment plans in addition to Veryant?
We are always evaluating possibilities and will continue to grow our market position through direct services, technology, partnerships and acquisitions. In June 2006, we acquired the UniKix rehosting software technology from Sun Microsystems and we have grown that customer base to 1300 sites worldwide and won some major projects in that space, including the New York Stock Exchange and more recently the County of San Mateo.
We expect Veryant to achieve the same level of success and will keep our eyes open for other opportunities which translate into better business value and greater choice for the market.
Where does one learn more about isCOBOL?
isCOBOL information can be found at
veryant.com. The team there has recently renovated its corporate website and continues to add new product details. You can also contact Veryant by emailing
info@veryant.com and they’ll direct you to the appropriate resource. Questions related specifically to Clerity can of course be sent to
info@clerity.com or to me directly at
bedenfield@clerity.com.
