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Acrilex modernizes critical applications and preserves investments in COBOL with isCOBOL


With more than five decades of operation and leadership in the artistic paint market, Acrilex modernized its corporate applications by migrating its COBOL environment to the isCOBOL platform on Linux. The initiative brought immediate performance gains, greater operational stability, and paved the way for new digital services, without compromising the systems that support the entire operation of the company..

The company

Founded in 1964 in São Paulo and located in São Bernardo do Campo (SP) since 1972, Acrilex is considered the largest manufacturer of artistic, decorative, and school paints in Latin America.

The company produces more than 13,000 tons of paint, maintains a portfolio of about 3,000 items, employs approximately 500 employees, and sells its products in over 10,000 points of sale in Brazil, in addition to exporting to 36 countries.


The challenge

Acrilex's corporate system, developed in COBOL, integrates all the company's activities — from raw material entry, formulation, and product development to commercial, industrial, and financial management. In total, about 2,000 programs support the entire operation, with industrial and administrative modules.

The previous environment, based on COBOL on the UnixWare platform, was limited and at risk of discontinuity. A complete system replacement would involve disruptions in critical processes, as well as require high investments and long reconfiguration timelines.

In light of this scenario, the challenge was to modernize the infrastructure and prepare the environment for new technological demands, fully preserving the investments already made and ensuring business continuity.

The solution

After evaluating application modernization tools, the IT team at Acrilex identified isCOBOL as the solution that best met the business needs, especially due to its flexibility in code customization, licensing model, and the robustness of support and training services.

With support and consulting from INTERON, the project involved the migration of over 2,000 programs and 700 layouts. The new architecture began operating with isCOBOL on Linux, using the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), offering greater scalability, portability, and adherence to current technologies.

All planning and execution were conducted by the team of analysts at Acrilex, with specialized support from INTERON throughout all stages of the project.


The results

Even without changes to the hardware configuration, users reported immediate performance gains, and downtime due to system unavailability was virtually eliminated.

The modernization also created opportunities to revitalize the application interfaces, through the IDE features of isCOBOL, making the systems more intuitive and ready for continuous evolution, such as integration with web services and new digital projects.