Founded in the United Kingdom in 1976, Micro Focus provides world-class software for developing and deploying legacy applications on mainframes, PCs and distributed environments, ensuring that IT departments can make the most of their existing enterprise application systems. As the industry standard for COBOL, Micro Focus bridges business-critical legacy assets with .NET, Java, XML and Web services.

Micro Focus sells its software products directly, through resellers and through hardware system vendors. Major independent software vendors around the globe use our software to build best-of-breed packaged applications. In addition, systems integrators including CSC, HP Services and EDS, along with the IT departments of Global 2000 companies use Micro Focus tools to migrate, develop, extend and deploy key business applications.

Micro Focus International Ltd. is an independent, privately held company with equity investment from Golden Gate Capital. The company has more than 480 employees worldwide, with principal offices in the United Kingdom, United States and Japan.

Micro Focus Products

Mainframe Express® Enterprise Edition - the industry's leading unified environment for mainframe development that significantly reduces risk and cost while offering improved business agility through extension to J2EE, .NET and Web services. As a complete mainframe application development and extension environment hosted on the PC, it allows automated code generation, analysis, compilation, debugging and unit testing of applications on workstations while allowing the flexibility to extend existing business transactions to any platform.

Net Express® with .NET - the most productive contemporary COBOL development environment enabling the creation and reuse of core business processes, extending them to the Web and other distributed platforms. Net Express delivers business agility and reduces costs by integrating COBOL with Java, XML, .NET and Web services. A Professional Edition is available bundled with Revolve® application understanding and analysis solution.

Server Express™ - the high performance development environment that maximizes productivity and increases the scalability of Linux and UNIX COBOL applications and includes features of Net Express in the UNIX environment. Server Express delivers business agility and reduces costs by integrating COBOL with Java, XML, and Web services as well as providing the most effective way to migrate COBOL applications to newer, high-performance, lower cost platforms.

Revolve® Enterprise Edition - the application understanding, analysis and documentation solution that identifies changes required across an entire application, allows projects to be accurately estimated and managed, and reduces the cost of analysis by increasing programmer and analyst productivity.

EnterpriseLink® - the legacy presentation integration solution that improves application accessibility while reducing costs by transforming mainframe host applications into web applications within 90 days.

Application Server™ - the high-performance production environment that maximizes the scalability and portability of COBOL applications developed with Net Express or Server Express.

Enterprise Server - provides a low cost, scalable, managed and high performance transactional environment for the deployment of CICS COBOL applications and services, COBOL/J2EE applications and Direct COBOL Web services to Windows, Linux and UNIX.

Micro Focus Professional Services

Micro Focus' Professional Services team is your strategic business partner, bringing the highest levels of expertise and professionalism across the enterprise through Consulting and Training services.

Micro Focus Consulting – Aiding customers with in-depth knowledge of Micro Focus product technologies, operating systems, utilities and related technologies. Expert Micro Focus consultants work with customers' development teams, providing mentoring on the most effective use of Micro Focus products to deliver world-class enterprise applications.

Micro Focus Training – Providing education and training solutions to help IT teams build software for competitive business advantage. Micro Focus provides comprehensive, up-to-date task-based training courses on Micro Focus product offerings and industry topics, with hands-on instruction.

Unlocking the Value of Legacy

Micro Focus is the leading provider of legacy application development and deployment software for contemporary platforms. Micro Focus enables organizations to unlock the value of their legacy by reusing their business-critical assets with .NET, Java, XML and Web services, resulting in reduced costs, increased agility and minimal risk.

Migration Solutions

LYNX ict services together with Micro Focus products offers a variety of solutions to technology-driven migration products. Through the application of a mature technology and specialist technology, LYNX ict will ensure that your migration is successfully completed in a manner that mitigates risk, contains cost and reduces timeframes.

Press Office

Micro Focus & Microsoft

MICROSOFT AND MICRO FOCUS FORM MAINFRAME MIGRATION ALLIANCE

—Strategic Alliance to Promote Rapid and Efficient Migration from Mainframe Systems to the Microsoft Platform—

NEW YORK, April 8, 2004– Micro Focus International Ltd. (Micro Focus®) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) today announced the creation of a new alliance to enable the migration of critical proprietary mainframe systems onto the Microsoft Windows® operating system using Microsoft .NET technology. The alliance lays the technology foundation to move application workloads from the mainframe to more modern Intel® (Nasdaq “INTC”) architecture and the Windows Server™ platform. It aims to help customers reduce the high cost of maintaining and modernizing their aging mainframe environments.

Redeploying mainframe legacy assets to newer, cheaper platforms saves time and money. Costs can be reduced by up to 50 percent when moving IT operations to an equivalent Windows platform. Customers have also reported improved performance, enabling them to improve key business processes without significant additional investment.

"As organizations increasingly realize that they need to re-use rather than replace their existing mainframe applications, any initiative that enables them to do this at lower cost and risk is extremely valuable to them," said Gary Barnett, IT Research Director at OVUM. "This alliance will help enterprise users take a more cost-effective and reliable approach to the task of migrating applications to the Windows platform than the expensive and risk-prone 'rip and replace' approach that was the vogue in the late 1990s."

Micro Focus Enterprise Server with its new Mainframe Transaction Option underpins the new platform alliance and now enables the migration and deployment of CICS/COBOL mainframe applications to the Windows platform. Enterprise Server offers the most rapid and lowest-risk way of re-hosting mainframe applications on Windows. Once the application has been re-hosted, it can be extended more easily and effectively through the use of the .NET Framework, SQL Server™ 2000, XML and Web services.

“We have seen outstanding results by migrating our IT operation to the Windows environment through Micro Focus’ solutions,” said Léo Théberge, Chief Information Officer of Québec Loisir, a direct-to-consumer media corporation that is part of DirectGroup Bertelsmann. “Moving to Windows is a critical business decision for us because it provides a low cost, strategic platform to leverage critical value from our existing IT assets.”

Over the years, most mainframe customers have made substantial investments that support key business processes. However, to remain competitive and deliver more value per application dollar, CIO’s and technology managers face mandates to reduce these costs and drive business agility by migrating CICS/COBOL applications to a more modern and extensible platform. Customers can obtain a significant increase in their flexibility and ability to respond to business changes by migrating off the mainframe.

“The opportunity to work with world-class partners implementing enterprise-scale technology for customers is very important to Microsoft,” said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. “Our relationship with Micro Focus helps customers move monolithic and expensive mainframe systems to the more agile Microsoft platform.”

“We’re pleased to be working with Micro Focus through Intel® Early Access Program,” said Melissa Laird, general manager, Software Enabling Division at Intel. “Our objective is to provide customers with access to resources that will help them derive more value from their existing IT investments and complement new technology initiatives that support the migration to lower cost, higher efficiency Intel® architecture-based platforms.”

“Micro Focus recognizes the significant investments that many organizations have made in legacy applications and the challenges the enterprises face as they evaluate approaches for deriving further value from those investments,” said Tony Hill, chief executive officer at Micro Focus. “Working with partners, we are committed to providing the most reliable modernization strategy for organizations to unlock the value of their legacy systems.”