MICRO FOCUS COBOL NOW EXTENDED TO THE MICROSOFT .NET FRAMEWORK

-- Micro Focus Net Express integrating with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, furthering businesses' ability to reuse and maximize value of existing legacy assets --

SUNNYVALE, Calif.and NEWBURY, United Kingdom, Oct. 28, 2002 - Micro Focus International Ltd. (Micro Focus®) today announced the extension of its COBOL offering to the Microsoft® .NET Framework and its formal relationship with Microsoft through the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Integration Program (VSIP). Micro Focus will integrate Net Express® with Visual Studio .NET, enabling Micro Focus customers, such as leading enterprise application vendor SYSPRO, to take full advantage of existing business-critical logic and legacy assets in deploying them on the Microsoft .NET Framework. This builds on Micro Focus' recent announcement delivering COBOL for Web services and gives enterprises real choice in reusing and renovating mission-critical applications for interoperability with newer technologies.

"By connecting systems and information in the enterprise, Microsoft .NET enables customers to get real value from their existing technology investments," said Tom Button, vice president of the Developer Platform and Evangelism Division at Microsoft Corp. "Our relationship with Micro Focus and the work they are doing will enable their enterprise customers to efficiently and quickly harness the power of Microsoft .NET."

IT professionals will now be able to maximize return on existing COBOL assets, future-proof COBOL applications to keep pace with emerging technologies and help business professionals deliver more value to clients. By integrating Net Express with Visual Studio .NET, Micro Focus will provide direct support for easy transition of COBOL applications to .NET. The new solution will enable COBOL applications to run as managed code under the Microsoft Common Language Runtime, providing flexibility for the extension of existing legacy applications to the Web.

SYSPRO, a long-time Micro Focus customer, successfully uses Net Express with the Microsoft .NET Framework. SYSPRO produced business-to-business Web applications by reusing existing business logic that had been developed over a period of 18 years. Taking advantage of Net Express and .NET interoperability, SYSPRO was able to extract value from their prior investments by Web-enabling and automating COBOL applications with minimal time and cost.

"With the introduction of Microsoft .NET it was vital for us to stay ahead of the curve by delivering a solution to our customers built for Microsoft .NET from day one," said Phil Duff, managing director of SYSPRO. "We were delighted to discover that Net Express has the capability to take our valuable COBOL business logic and ready it for the .NET Framework quickly and seamlessly, allowing us to fully exploit the advantages of .NET within our enterprise applications on Microsoft platforms. With Net Express and .NET we automated and streamlined our business processes - gaining a key advantage over our competitors."

"Companies around the world are looking to exploit and renovate their legacy applications," said Tony Hill, chairman and chief executive officer of Micro Focus. "Our relationship with Microsoft will allow our mutual customers to gain a significant competitive advantage. Through our recent collaboration with Microsoft and Alnova Technologies Corporation, a leading provider of retail banking applications, we have proven that large-scale mainframe COBOL applications can be migrated rapidly and cost-effectively to Microsoft .NET. Such work has resulted in a universal banking system application that is highly tuned to our product, increasing the performance of Alnova's applications."

For details about Net Express for Microsoft .NET, please contact Micro Focus at +1 (877) 772-4450 in the United States.

About Micro Focus

Micro Focus is the fastest, most effective way to migrate, extend, develop and deploy enterprise applications. As the industry standard for COBOL, Micro Focus enables organizations to maximize ROI while reducing development costs for accelerated business success. Founded in 1976, Micro Focus is a global company with principal offices in the United Kingdom, United States and Japan. For more information, visit www.microfocus.com.

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Micro Focus and Net Express are registered trademarks of Micro Focus International Ltd. Other products named in this release may be trademarks of their respective companies. Information on Alnova Technologies Corporation can be found at www.alnovatech.com.