MICRO FOCUS BRIDGES LEGACY ASSETS WITH MICROSOFT .NET TECHNOLOGIES AS PREMIER PARTNER IN NEW VISUAL STUDIO INDUSTRY PARTNER PROGRAM

-- New relationship will increase the efficiency of moving mainframe COBOL applications to Microsoft platform using Visual Studio .NET 2003 --

NEW YORK, July 29, 2003 -Micro Focus International Ltd. (Micro Focus®) today announced from VSLive! New York its support for the new Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program as a premier partner. With the new VSIP program, Micro Focus can deliver solutions that are more tightly integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and enable enterprise customers to deliver mission-critical COBOL applications that cost effectively reuse legacy assets and still take advantage of the Microsoft .NET Framework. Most importantly this relationship will accelerate the migration of legacy assets to Microsoft's platform.

"With the new VSIP program, we are committed to providing our partners with the tools they need to increase benefits and productivity for our mutual customers," said PrashantSridharan, senior product manager for the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft Corp. "Micro Focus has used the benefits of the VSIP program to build a tightly integrated solution that helps businesses take advantage of their existing systems, while still enjoying the power, performance and productivity of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET 2003."

Micro Focus is working closely on legacy integration issues geared toward reducing the total cost of ownership of IT by moving mainframe COBOL applications to the Microsoft platform.

The benefits of this relationship include:

· Improved communication and working efficiency between product developers to create a complete and robust production-COBOL environment for the Microsoft platform.

· Simplifying the options for legacy transformation by bridging the world of mainframe legacy to the Microsoft .NET Framework with minimal business risk.

· Improving customer sales and support by reaffirming the inherent business value of COBOL technology.

· Transforming legacy applications into strategic components and services for the .NET Framework, thereby maintaining valuable corporate IT assets.

· Increasing customer awareness, through joint marketing efforts, establishing the Windows platform as a mainframe alternative.

Working with Microsoft, Micro Focus has already paid dividends for retail banking application provider Alnova Technologies Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Accenture. Alnova looked to Micro Focus for migrating their core banking functions to Microsoft Windows Server 2003, giving their solution a wider market than its traditional mainframe-based product. "Micro Focus and Microsoft together provided the necessary resources for extending our mainframe back end core banking solution within the .NET Framework that is flexible, secure and has high availability," said Zigor de la Quintana, alliances manager for Alnova. "Having already delivered our solution successfully, we look forward to working with both companies again in an even more seamless manner."

"We are pleased to broaden our joint marketing activities and evangelize the benefits of Microsoft .NET technology to our COBOL-centric customers," said Terry Glenn, director of Microsoft alliance for Micro Focus. "As Microsoft continues to expand Visual Studio .NET 2003 in the enterprise, Micro Focus will be there to help our joint customers realize the potential of this powerful platform."

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 bridges business-critical legacy assets with Web services, J2EE, XML and .NET, enabling organizations to reduce costs, increase agility and minimize risk for accelerated business success. The company's software products for COBOL are among the most widely used in the industry with an estimated 130,000 COBOL developers in 80,000 organizations producing applications used by more than 3,000,000 people around the world. 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 is a registered trademark of Micro Focus International Ltd. All non-Micro Focus products mentioned in this announcement are property of their respective owners.