MICRO FOCUS FORECASTS IT MELTDOWN IF EMPLOYERS & EDUCATIONDO NOT WORK CLOSER TOGETHER

- Business failing to connect with academia to develop IT graduates with skills needed most by business, says Micro Focus CEO Stephen Kelly  -

NEWBURY, England, December 3, 2008 — Micro Focus® (LSE.MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application management and modernisation solutions, today calls on business and education institutions alike to ensure they are working together to produce graduates with the IT skills most needed by UK business today. Addressing an audience of UK academic institutions at Kingston University, London, England, Stephen Kelly, CEO of Micro Focus, will today emphasise the disaster organisations will face if they do not co-ordinate their recruitment efforts with academia to guarantee graduates with the vital skills to safeguard their core IT systems. Kelly will highlight that businesses are failing in their responsibilities if they do not work now with the academic and educational institutions that teach vital IT skills.

Research this week from Micro Focus, with European business school INSEAD, revealed that business heads regard core systems and information as the most critical to business success, compared with newer technologies. Yet newer technologies, such as Web 2.0, receive the bulk of the recruitment budget.

Kelly will urge companies to rectify this potentially catastrophic situation, by prioritising the skills that are most critical to their business success, namely the skills required to manage and maintain their core IT assets.  He will encourage employers to work closely with academia to equip graduates with the best skills to safeguard these assets into the future.

“As we live in times of recession, it is critical for UK organisations to glean the maximum value from their heartbeat IT systems,” said Kelly. “In the UK, we have wasted seven years - the number of IT graduates in the UK has halved since 2001.  The UK education system has failed business. Core IT systems prove their worth every day and without them, businesses would fall apart. If the UK education system does not address this issue now, the UK economy could suffer irreparable damage.  The UK looked to Financial Services to be the engine room of the economy.  Today, we face a new reality and a new order.”

Professor Jim Norton, Senior Policy Adviser, e-Business & e-Government, Institute of Directors, UK, commented: “We are now at the stage where UK business needs to act to take measures to avoid their core IT systems becoming obsolete. Without these assets, UK enterprises will not be able to function, not be able to compete with their global counterparts and the economy will suffer greatly as a result.”

Micro Focus is currently looking to assist universities address this issue through its ACademic ConnecTION (ACTION) programme, which provides member universities with free access to the latest technology and teaching tools for enterprise application development. Since its launch in May 2007, an average of one educational institution per week has recognised the need to act, by signing up to the program, and there have been 25,000 downloads from students.

About Micro Focus
Micro Focus, a member of the FTSE 250, provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization and Management software enables customers’ business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. For additional information please visit www.microfocus.com