Micro Focus Visual COBOL and Mainframe Solution Information

Introduction Micro Focus International plc (Micro Focus®; LSE: MCRO.L) provides innovative software that allows companies to develop, test, deploy, assess and modernize business-critical enterprise applications. Micro Focus’ software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. Micro Focus has more than 30 years of expertise, more than 18,000 customers and over two million licensed users, including 91 of the Fortune Global 100 companies.

Micro Focus products for IBM zEnterprise - making the mainframe work even smarter.

The Micro Focus Enterprise product set aims to help tackle the application innovation modernization needs of IBM mainframe development and delivery teams. The enterprise application knowledge, development, test and workload deployment tools significantly improve the efficiency of business application delivery, IT leaders to transform their zEnterprise environment.

Press Release

As a result, 51% of CIOs admit their business is exposed to compliance and risk issues, new global study findsNewbury, UK, March 4 201

590 CIOs and IT directors polled from nine countries around the globe estimate it would take an average of $11 million to bring their outdated mainframe applications up to date – an increase of almost a third (29%) from May 2012 when the figure stood at $8.5 million1. That’s according to an independent global research study undertaken by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO.L). Respondents also confirmed the IT debt2 problem will only get worse, anticipating an increase of 9% over the next five years.

“Core mainframe applications are often the lifeblood of the organization, yet the burden of IT debt is on the increase. A major factor in this is that many non-IT people think IT innovation only means brand new technology, rather than improving existing, critical applications3. The IT leadership challenge is to find smart ways to blend innovation projects with protecting and evolving their critical systems.”

CIOs Estimate 29% Rise in Mainframe Application IT Debt over Last 18 Months

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Read more at: http://www.microfocus.com/about/press/pressreleases/2014/pr04032014.aspx

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98% claim new features would enhance productivity, but many think modernization is too difficultNewbury, UK, February 5, 2014

While 93% of organisations today still use green screen applications, 54% of CIOs say working with them is having a negative impact on end user retention and recruitment. That’s according to an independent global research study undertaken by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO.L).

Of the 590 CIOs and IT directors polled from nine countries around the globe, a staggering 89% have had complaints from end users about aspects of their green screen applications, with nearly two thirds (65%) claiming end users feel bored, frustrated, ambivalent or restricted when using these applications. IT leaders themselves appear to agree, with 55% believing green screen applications do not do a good job.

“Today’s end-user expects mobility, efficiency and simplicity from their business applications, and the same experience on any device, whenever, wherever. The accepted wisdom is that you cannot provide this from green screen systems – but that isn’t true.

It is possible to both quickly and cheaply modernize green screen systems, delivering new features that take advantage of Windows, the internet and mobile devices, without any application code change or disruption to the end user community. Our Rumba solution delivers exactly that. This means the intellectual property inherent in green screen applications remains intact to deliver even greater competitive advantage.”

CIOs Believe Green Screen Systems Hamper Retention and Recruitment, Global Study Reveals

Read more at: http://www.microfocus.com/about/press/pressreleases/2014/pr05022014.aspx

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Customers improve user efficiency and enable mobile access without risky or time-consuming codingNewbury, UK, January 21, 2014

Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO.L), a leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, has confirmed two additional customers have achieved fast, cost effective business application modernization using its Rumba technology. Allianz UK and Cooperative Communication have implemented Rumba to deliver efficiencies through streamlined business processes and improve the accessibility of core business applications through web, desktop and mobile interfaces.

“Our customers want to continue to exploit the value of their application software investments and modernize them to take advantage of leading technology developments such as mobile. Requiring no application code changes, Rumba is the risk-free, cost effective approach that enables customers to boost their business efficiency in a simple and flexible way.”

Allianz UK Future-Proofs Key Business Applications with Micro Focus Rumba

Read more at: http://www.microfocus.com/about/press/pressreleases/2014/pr21012014.aspx

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Micro Focus and the Mainframe 50th Anniversary Site

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Visual COBOL 2.2.1

When Applications Mean Business – Visual COBOL 2.2.1Posted on 04. Jun, 2014 by Ed Airey in COBOL, Product updates, Visual COBOL

Changing a complex IT estate for the better can be anything but easy – but the value of those applications, and smarter ways of extracting that value, can make this a sound business bet, as Ed Airey explores.

For many organizations, the IT function has provided incalculable value over the years, through innovation in support of the business. The result of this tremendous effort is untold, enduring business value. One executive we know proudly boasts that his IT strategy “is the reason we are still in business today”.

However, a natural by-product of such investment is a very complex IT environment. In any organization of any size, regardless of technical strategy or bias, the IT estate is typically a wide array of disparate, heterogeneous systems, tied together by a delicate fabric of dependencies and relationships. It makes the understanding, prioritization, resourcing and change of enterprise applications extremely difficult.

“How did it get like this?” one CIO is quoted to have said to another. “It got like this one good decision at a time.” Reality in IT, more often than not, is that demand for change takes place against a backdrop of complexity, cost and very likely, confusion.

Barriers to Change

The difficulty for many organizations is that it is hard to focus, amid a landscape of changing priorities and strategic goals. For most organizations: the majority of budget is spent on “keeping the lights on” – the day-to-day running of the organization. Recent research by Vanson Bourne (2013) puts the dollar figure for resolving the backlog – or IT debt – at an average of $11M per organization, an average which has grown by nearly 30% in less than two years.

While the IT backlog is getting larger, unprecedented levels of regulatory scrutiny in many industries is producing an array of compliance measures and controls – with fixed deadlines, all adding to the IT burden. Failure to comply is not an option.

With the majority of IT focus on ‘keeping the lights on’ and adding compliance controls, this provides very little time and budget for new innovation – innovation required to remain competitive and keep one’s competitive advantage. Innovation such as mobile computing initiatives, better customer

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Visual COBOL 2.2.1

management, social media, big data and Cloud, as examples, are left untouched by these organizations focused on day-to-day operational tasks. How does that organization keep pace with this need for change and need for new technology adoption?

The Application is Key

The solution starts with a return to first principles, a return to what has worked in the past and has served that organization well to date – its applications. Sure, language choices, tooling, skills, and processes are all important, but fundamentally the APPLICATIONS you have today, and the data they connect to are the very cornerstone of business success.

If it were only that simple! As we’ve already mentioned, every day IT faces new challenges, as new business initiatives surface requiring an ever increasing level of functionality and agility. Aligning existing applications to new requirements is often anything but easy. So how can IT continue to deliver value as quickly as it needs while protecting the investment in competitive advantage that its core applications represent?

Building Bridges

What if there was a technology that could enable organizations to tackle the day-to-day challenges of IT, but also embrace the constant wave of modern technology – bridging the old with the new? After all, with the core apps written in COBOL, but the new world of IT in managed code, running on mobile devices, deployed into the cloud… where would we begin?

What if there was a way?

Enter stage left Visual COBOL. An unrivalled technology that helps IT tackle the everyday challenges of skills, resourcing, and development efficiency, while creating a bridge to mobile, cloud and new architecture innovations. Bridging the two worlds together, allowing the organization to drive more value from existing core assets and delivering a new era of innovation.

Getting Better Every Year

Micro Focus is the only vendor continually investing tens of millions of dollars each year in COBOL application development technology. The result is a consistent stream of new capabilities to help our customers innovate faster. The latest incarnation, Visual COBOL 2.2.1, is now available. For our Net Express and Server Express customers, this Visual COBOL update provides even further compatibility to accelerate their transition, and delivers new capabilities to address the IT challenges of today while embracing the innovative technologies of tomorrow. See what all the excitement is about – take the Visual COBOL Screen Test. See why people are saying Visual COBOL is the Future of COBOL. Interested in a test drive?

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