is the inertia of rewriting these systems in a modern stack so great that it's cheaper to keep finding COBOL specialists forever? why not just sit down and rewrite these systems?
Re-writing that, is going to be a nightmare, as you've got no spec. to work from and mistakes may not show up immediately (think monthly or annual payment processes)
It's a very high risk endevour with little immediate reward for the team doing it. If it goes perfectly, no-one notices, if it goes badly it could seriously impact your whole company.
There is little immediate reward so let this dumpster fire explode on our kids...
It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good logic. We desperately need more long term thinking.
In the organizations I've seen with mainframes, what happened was a panoply of supporting systems sprung up where new requirements existed as everyone was afraid of making significant changes to the mainframe environment.
Besides compiling to native code, there are compilers that target JVM and CLR as well.
So could you wrap it and slowly add new features and replace pieces with Java code over time, using JVM for interop?
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/visual-cobol/overv...