The French Ministry of Finance has moved to Open Source with COBOL-IT software.

This extremely important application includes functionality for managing the Value-Added Tax (VAT) application with all of its related uses, (business taxes, and mortgage investments, for example), altogether handling the collection of close to 70% of the receipts of the French government.

• How did this come to pass?
In this time of economic crisis, the Public Sector has a directive to «produce more with less». Following this directive, the French Ministry of Finance decided to abandon the proprietary COBOL software that they were using, and which had become extremely costly to maintain, and to transition to an open source COBOL that could provide equivalent functionality at significantly lower costs, and longer term guarantees on maintenance.

Of course, the COBOL-IT offering, with no price for Compiler or Runtime licenses, offers considerable savings. COBOL-IT earns money on Subscriptions that our clients purchase and renew on a yearly basis. The Subscriptions provide our users with professional technical support services, and the very latest releases of our products.

But there is more. Customers escape vendor lock-in. With COBOL-IT, customers have a COBOL running their business that is not a “black box”, and that does not create new security questions whenever the vendor changes management, or ownership.

Cost, Service, and Freedom are proving to be a powerful force for change, and we are currently seeing high levels of interest with large corporate clients, and government agencies emerging as champions of Open Source software, and of COBOL-IT.

Click here to access the complete interview with Stephane Croce.