MICRO FOCUS AND MIGRATIONWARE PARTNER TO MIGRATE LEGACY APPLICATIONS TO AGILE, LOW COST PLATFORMS

-- St. Helens Council latest UK local government authority to move from mainframe to Windows and UNIX to reduce costs --

NEWBURY United Kingdom, Aug. 2, 2005 - Micro Focus® today announced that it has successfully partnered with MigrationWare, a leading provider of application systems migration technologies, to migrate critical legacy applications from proprietary mainframe environments to the Microsoft® Windows® platform. St. Helens Council, on Merseyside is the latest local government authority to have realised the benefits of moving off the mainframe with an immediate £300,000 reduction in annual hardware and software costs.

St. Helens decided to move critical financial Accounts Payable and General Ledger applications to Windows, for two primary reasons. Firstly, the council had adopted Lotus Domino as a key component of their strategic IT platform and, second, the Council's Information Computing Technology (ICT) team had concluded that the mainframe environment would not provide a suitable long-term future for hosting a Domino-based architecture or meet the needs of the Council's long-term IT objectives. As a result, St. Helens needed to consolidate all systems to a Windows and UNIX based infrastructure, to enable them to decommission the mainframe prior to renewal date of March 2005, to avoid ongoing mainframe hardware and software costs of approximately £300,000 per annum.

Using the services of MigrationWare, St. Helens converted the key MANTIS and COBOL mainframe systems, which they could not replace with packages, to new COBOL/CICS based applications to be deployed with Micro Focus Enterprise Server, one of the products collectively known as Micro Focus Server, on the Windows platform.

"With the migration approach there's no need to throw legacy applications away, instead they can be seen as assets to be re-used, in more modern and cost-effective environments." said Ste Sharples, ICT Business Manager, St. Helens Council. "We can now re-use, re-shape and re-mould the important systems and data built-up over many years on the mainframe."

"The mainframe migration project has enabled the Council to completely revolutionize the way we operate. All of St. Helens legacy systems have been replaced with packages or re-hosted using ground-breaking technologies providing contemporary capabilities for improved integration, to meet all the challenges of a modern council," said Cath Robinson, Assistant Treasurer (Audit, IT & Efficiency), St. Helens Council.

"Our expertise in language and database conversions along with the 'Lift and Shift' migration approach from Micro Focus is a compelling option for organizations like St. Helens who've made a strategic decision to move off the mainframe," said Mark Cooper, Director at MigrationWare.

"We are delighted to be partnering with MigrationWare to help government entities like St. Helens Council realize the inherent value built into their legacy systems," said Ian Archbell, vice president of product management at Micro Focus. "Once again UK local government has used our 'Lift and Shift' approach to move critical applications to Windows and UNIX to reduce costs while increasing agility."

About MigrationWare

MigrationWare specializes in the provision of products, supported by services, designed to reduce the cost and risk of migrating and transforming application systems and data from mainframes to modern more cost effective platforms. We combine our products, services and our extensive experience of applications migrations with our partner relationships to offer solutions to customers wishing to migrate, renovate, renew or transform their application systems and data. For more information, visit www.migrationware.com

Micro Focus - Unlocking the Value of Legacy™

Micro Focus is a leading provider of legacy development and deployment software for enterprise platforms. Micro Focus enables organizations to reduce costs and increase agility with minimal risk by reusing their legacy applications with contemporary architectures and Web services. Founded in 1976, Micro Focus is a global company with principal offices in the United Kingdom, United States and Japan. For more information www.microfocus.com.

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Micro Focus is a registered trademark and Unlocking the Value of Legacy and Lift and Shift are trademarks of Micro Focus. All other products mentioned in this announcement are trademarks of their respective owners.