The point is that if you convert away from COBOL to a more modern language, you can also move away from Z-series hardware to commodity x86 and ARM servers. That's why this announcement affected IBM's share price.
IEEE 754-2008 defines decimal floating point arithmetic that is compatible with COBOL and is usually implemented using the Intel Decimal Floating Point Math Library on commodity hardware.
For a typical core banking ledger application, the performance cost of a software implementation of DFP (vs. having DFP hardware instructions) is pretty low, and greatly outweighed by the benefits of being able to use commodity hardware and more maintainable languages.
Are there ARM or Intel servers capable of the reliability and availability of the Z-Series in Parallel Sysplex operation where processing can continue uninterrupted even if one of a pair of data centers becomes unavailable?
If a change of platform is the real objective, why not compile the COBOL for the ARM or Intel server?
It doesn't appear to be equivalent. If one site in a stretched cluster becomes suddenly available, the same batch processing application would not be running on the alternative site. The application would have to be restarted after the VM has been moved.
IEEE 754-2008 defines decimal floating point arithmetic that is compatible with COBOL and is usually implemented using the Intel Decimal Floating Point Math Library on commodity hardware.
For a typical core banking ledger application, the performance cost of a software implementation of DFP (vs. having DFP hardware instructions) is pretty low, and greatly outweighed by the benefits of being able to use commodity hardware and more maintainable languages.