Micro Focus Delivers Increased Business Agility At Lower Cost For Mission Critical COBOL Applications
-- Net Express and Enterprise Server now deliver a complete development and deployment environment that includes direct COBOL Web services, J2EE connectivity and XML support--
PHOENIX, May 13, 2003 - Micro Focus International Ltd. (Micro Focus®) today announced at GigaWorld IT Forum innovative enhancements to its Net Express® development and deployment environment to provide customers with increased business agility and lower Total Cost of Ownership for their enterprise applications. Net Express 4.0 enables organizations to realize additional value from their existing COBOL applications by extending them to Windows™ and UNIX environments. The enhancements to Net Express include direct COBOL Web services, J2EE connectivity and XML support, which help organizations re-use and integrate COBOL assets within strategic architectures. Today's announcement builds on Micro Focus' previous success at extending the value of COBOL applications and delivers on its commitment to making COBOL the platform of choice for organizations that value the importance of flexibility in their IT decision-making.
As part of today's announcement, Micro Focus also introduced Enterprise Server, a new deployment option for Net Express. Enterprise Server elevates COBOL to an independent platform with its highly scalable, reliable and transactional COBOL deployment environment for two-tier client/server and three-tier composite COBOL applications developed using Net Express. Enterprise Sever incorporates support for direct Web services and a COBOL resource adapter for J2EE connections, allowing COBOL to integrate with all popular deployment technologies and participate fully in today's Web-based world. Enterprise Server, together with Net Express, permits costeffective new development and deployment of enterprise applications with the most contemporary technologies while reusing existing business processes and skills.
Hal Peters, president of Pinebrook Consulting, has used Micro Focus' Net Express and Enterprise Server products in various IT consulting projects. "Micro Focus Net Express and Enterprise Server have helped us find the balance between the legacy systems running mission critical applications and the need to extend and deploy these applications with new and emerging technologies like Web services," said Peters. "Many of our clients' systems are COBOL- centric, with millions of lines of missioncritical code, and Micro Focus helps us integrate the various technologies to achieve the best performance at the lowest cost with a single proven solution."
Net Express allows the billions of lines of COBOL code still used in today's mainframe systems to continue delivering business value by transforming the code into direct COBOL Web services and platform independent applications for immediate availability on the Web and through the enterprise. Its direct Web services functionality allows a program to be developed, deployed and consumed in COBOL to expand business across the Internet and reduce rollout costs across an Intranet. With Web services, Java and .NET can be used to access COBOL, which can pull enterprise assets created with appropriate standards-based technology - regardless of language and platform.
Texas-based Valero Energy Corporation, one of the top U.S. refining companies, has already seen the benefits of deploying legacy applications using Enterprise Server. "As we moved our proprietary credit card programs to a services-based technology environment, Valero needed a solution that would allow for a phased low-risk approach that also took advantage of our existing COBOL assets," said Steve DiPaola, vice president of retail and administrative systems for Valero Energy. "Micro Focus Enterprise Server has proven to be a high-performance, scalable and reliable platform for the deployment of COBOL applications, which is more cost effective and has less risk to critical business operations than a 'replace/re-write' approach. The re-use of existing applications and infrastructure, facilitated by Micro Focus, allows us to move strategically in support of business requirements."
Generally available today, Net Express and Enterprise Server reduce costs to develop and deploy Windows and/or UNIX COBOL applications by taking advantage of existing application assets. The new enhancements in Net Express assist organizations with existing COBOL assets to integrate these applications onto newer platforms, migrate applications easily and effectively from older, burning platforms, and allow for re-use and extension of these assets. Additionally, Net Express helps organizations address critical skills issues by enabling collaboration among developers with differing expertise.
"Organizations that can quickly adapt to changing business requirements while also delivering tangible value have become the IT imperative for today's business leaders. With Net Express and Enterprise Server, companies can utilize existing COBOL assets to rapidly build and deploy applications that offer improved time to market to address business needs and reduce cost while also benefiting from COBOL's inherent scalability," said Ian Archbell, vice president of product management, Micro Focus.
About Micro Focus Net Express
Micro Focus Net Express® is a COBOL development environment that takes core business processes and extends them to the Web and other distributed platforms for increased business agility and reduced application cost. You can quickly construct enterprise components and services from your existing business logic and use these to develop new web or client/server applications across your distributed enterprise. Net Express provides an environment both to build new applications and leverage proven business logic, data and programming resources, reducing the development cycle and accelerating deployment of contemporary business applications.
About Micro Focus Enterprise Server
Micro Focus Enterprise Server provides a low cost, scalable, managed and highperformance transactional environment for the deployment of COBOL applications and services, COBOL/J2EE applications and Direct COBOL Web services to Windows, Linux and UNIX. Enterprise Server is designed to maximize reliability, performance and scalability by providing a fully managed environment for the execution of COBOL services across the enterprise. Micro Focus Enterprise Server is the deployment component for COBOL services created with the Micro Focus Net Express® or Micro Focus Server Express™ development products.
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. All other trademarks contained herein are properties of their respective owners.
