| Media Contacts: | |
| Laura Stiff | Kim Karelis |
| Micro Focus | LEWIS PR |
| 650-691-3153 | 617-226-8844 |
| Laura.stiff@microfocus.com | microfocusus@lewispr.com |
Rockville, MD, February 22, 2012
Micro Focus (LSE:MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, today announced that Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS), the second-oldest Class I railroad company in the United States, is using Micro Focus’ mainframe application migration solutions to reduce IT operating costs. By migrating their mainframe applications to a Red Hat Linux platform environment, KCS will cut 90 percent from its IT operating budget and bring the leading industrial transportation company one step closer to cloud computing.
Today's retail, industrial businesses and government organizations face significant challenges due to the current economic climate. Sharp swings in supply and demand place increased pressure on businesses to assess their inventory levels and transportation costs and are forcing many to identify ways to operate at a lower cost while maintaining the high level and quality of service their customers demand. For many of these businesses, Kansas City Southern is the answer. KCS offers the premiere rail route between the industrial heartlands of the U.S. and Mexico. Its customers benefit from seamless transportation across the largest cross-border gateway between the two countries. Like all competitive businesses, KCS is dedicated to providing exceptional customer service at the best price – and by reducing its own operating costs.
Using Micro Focus Studio Enterprise Edition and Server Enterprise Edition, Kansas City Southern migrated five business-critical applications from its IBM mainframe, including its Management Control System, which controls all aspects of train movements, rail car scheduling, crew work orders and waybilling and Crew Call, its Enterprise Workforce Management system.
The project was divided into three phases. The first step involved moving the four in-house developed applications and phase two required moving the Crew Call application and all development and test environments. The third and final stage of the project will enable KCS to turn off the mainframe completely, clearing the path to achieve its goal and slash the $3.9 million annual maintenance cost to just $400,000.
“For more than 50 years, Kansas City Southern has brought best-in-class service to our customers and value to our shareholders,” said Carl Harrison, Chief Information Officer, Kansas City Southern Railway. “In order to continue to develop and innovate in the transportation industry, we needed to cut cost without disturbing our existing infrastructure. In moving off the mainframe to a hosted environment, we’ve already seen savings of one million dollars and expect to save three times that by year’s end.”
The application suite targeted for migration was both sizable and mission-critical – not just for KCS, but for the railway partners with which the company’s systems interface. The applications involve approximately 8.5 million lines of COBOL source code and 1,850 product DB2 tables and are used by more than 600 people daily, with many others using the reports produced by the applications. For this reason, KCS moved all five core applications in just eight hours.
“This was an event with huge operational impact involving two countries, two sets of customers and all of our partners – so we were not only putting ourselves, but also our business allies and clients at great risk,” continued Harrison. “We knew we had the right strategy, the right technology and the right partner in Micro Focus – and the migration went flawlessly.”
“At the core, Micro Focus products unleash the power of critical enterprise applications by freeing them from legacy environments and, as a result, enabling a more agile, modern and cost-effective IT infrastructure based on Linux, Unix, Windows or the cloud,” said Steve Biondi, President, North American Operations, Micro Focus. “Kansas City Southern is a company steeped in tradition and history, and its ability to modernize and move towards the cloud exemplifies our vision to add value to our customers’ businesses by making it possible to develop and deploy better business applications, faster, and take advantage of next-generation technology as it emerges.”
Micro Focus Server Enterprise Edition provides the deployment environment for applications that have traditionally functioned only in a mainframe environment to operate on a broader range of platforms. This solution ensures that existing mainframe applications can be made available with little or no change to underlying code.
Micro Focus Studio Enterprise Edition gives organizations the ability to dramatically cut the cost of maintaining enterprise applications. It also gives organizations a way to increase development agility and reduce the time needed to put new applications or features into the hands of the users.
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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, Testing 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.
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Headquartered in Kansas City, MO, Kansas City Southern is a transportation holding company that has railroad investments in the U.S., Mexico and Panama. Its primary U.S. holding is The Kansas City Southern Railway Company, serving the central and south central U.S. Its international holdings include Kansas City Southern de Mexico, S.A. de C.V., serving northeastern and central Mexico and the port cities of Lázaro Cárdenas, Tampico and Veracruz, and a 50 percent interest in Panama Canal Railway Company, providing ocean-to-ocean freight and passenger service along the Panama Canal. Kansas City Southern's North American rail holdings and strategic alliances are primary components of a NAFTA Railway system, linking the commercial and industrial centers of the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
