Re: Just four years ago, Gartner reckoned by 2017....
If you search hard enough, there's probably a report suggesting that you write a CRM platform in COBOL.
Back in the 80s I met a guy who implemented a recursive descent compiler in COBOL-74, which didn't have recursion. He managed the stack as an array of records.
As for why he did it, his management wanted a DSL for some task, so he knocked up a prototype in lex and yacc. His management then deemed that as they were a COBOL shop and nobody else understood anything Unixy, all code should be in COBOL.