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| Kim Karelis | Laura Stiff |
| LEWIS PR | Micro Focus |
| +1 617-226-8844 | +1 650-691-3153 |
| microfocusuk@lewispr.com | Laura.stiff@microfocus.com |
Rockville, MD, June 28, 2012
The City of Fort Worth, Texas, has successfully completed the first phases of its modernization program by enabling the execution of several mission-critical applications on new Windows-based servers using modernization software from Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing, and management solutions. The move will save the City $850,000 a year in the ongoing costs of these applications that were traditionally hosted on a mainframe. This opens up a range of new opportunities where mainframe applications can now take advantage of contemporary architectures and their associated flexibility.
Fort Worth is currently the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas and the 16th-largest in the country. The administration employs more than 6,000 people and serves a population of approximately 750,000 residents. In 2009, the City’s IT Solutions department embarked on an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation project that required the creation of a new execution platform based on Windows and Dell servers. Integrating key applications, such as traffic signal management and jury services, was a key step in the process to enable these applications to execute in the new server environment. Fort Worth realized they could make significant savings with ongoing infrastructure costs, and so it was important to ensure that 100% of business function could be deployed this way.
Initially, the City considered an in-house solution to convert residual applications to .NET and SQL, but this option required burdening the already busy staff with an additional workload that they couldn’t handle. The City turned to Micro Focus because the company provided a way to move the applications with minimal disruption and change. By utilizing Micro Focus Enterprise Developer and Enterprise Server, the City has been able to seamlessly move the residual mission-critical applications and keep them running in the style that users are familiar with. Involving the Micro Focus services team also has allowed the City to complete this first step of this modernization process within project budget and time constraints. The City is on track to fully complete the implementation by December 2015.
“By implementing an alternative infrastructure based around commodity servers, we will be able to reduce ongoing IT costs as well as equip our staff with the skills needed to debug programs faster and actually improve application performance,” said Mark DeBoer, senior IT manager, City of Fort Worth. ”Additionally, this exercise has given our programmers a way to become familiar with the distributed environment and understand the difference between the Windows server and the mainframe ahead of the major ERP deployment, an enormous advantage as we embark on this extensive project.”
“As with any city, Fort Worth was conscious of its IT spend, and the adoption of Windows as their go- forward platform allowed for clear monetary savings that can be reallocated to other areas of need within the city budget,” said Steve Biondi, president, North America, Micro Focus. “The Micro Focus products are designed to give our customers choice for modernization options and are tuned to ensure goals are met efficiently, with reduced costs and little risk. We are particularly pleased that we have also aided the City of Fort Worth in completing this task ahead of schedule.”
For more information, please see the full case study, available here.
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.
