Micro Focus is a major player in bringing cobol onto Unix/Linux/Windows systems. They've been around for 30 years, and they have a market cap of less than a bi

Micro Focus is a major player in bringing cobol onto Unix/Linux/Windows systems. They've been around for 30 years, and they have a market cap of less than a billion dollars (converting from pounds to USD - they're based in the UK). Their business is really old (but new by mainframe standards), and doesn't have nearly as much room to grow. Even if they double in size by cannibalizing mainframe sales, they'll be worth 0.01 Googles, or 0.05 Amazons. So there's just not enough potential in supporting this kind of junk (which is not a trivial thing technically - it's ALL messy backward compatibility stuff, and the jobs are really not intellectually appealing: just imagine telling yourself or your friends that you maintain a small part of a cobol compiler for a living). And startups have virtually no chance at cannibalizing Micro Focus - it took MF a very long time to take any appreciable amount of business away from IBM's mainframes.