Stockholm, 7th June, 2012

According to Standish Group, 70% of CIOs believe the mainframe has a central, strategic role today. However, the mainframe poses challenges for IT teams: high operating costs, limited flexibility to support changing requirements and the need for specialized skills are all constricting the mainframe’s business value.

In response to the mainframe challenge, Micro Focus® (LSE.MCRO.L), the leading provider of application modernization, testing and management solutions, is launching its Enterprise product set, which enables customers to optimize all aspects of mainframe application delivery, drive down costs, increase productivity, and accelerate innovation.

Kevin Brearley, Director, Product Management at Micro Focus said: ”It’s time the industry addressed the mainframe ‘elephant in the room’. Enormous business value is built into the mainframe environment but the applications it runs are way behind where the business needs them to be. Modernization projects take too long, and costly ongoing increases in capacity are required. This calls for an optimization strategy to simplify the application landscape and its delivery processes – taking advantage of much lower cost capacity that is readily available today in the form of Windows, Unix, Linux and the cloud.”

Continuing, Brearley said: ”Importantly, the Enterprise product set delivers all this without the need to start from scratch, so organizations can build on the significant investments already made in business applications – potentially saving millions of pounds and thousands of man-hours in the process.”

The Enterprise product set comprises:

. Enterprise Analyzer – allows organizations to closely analyze the flexibility of applications; the technical metrics; what stakeholders or users believe is important; the cost-effectiveness of what is owned; impact analysis, and much more. Decision makers in the enterprise can leverage a clear repository of business intelligence about the application portfolio; while programming staff gain technical information that increases confidence, and improves accuracy and quality.

. Enterprise Developer – delivers the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that transforms the green screen character-based mainframe development environment into the look and feel of languages such as Java. Current developers will typically work 40% more productively in the new environment, while new developers will have a familiar Windows-like interface that eliminates the steep learning curve of the mainframe environment.

. Enterprise Test Server – enables organizations to free up mainframe MIPS by moving significant test cycles to a Windows server environment. By increasing available test capacity in this way, testing phases can be completed faster, quality can be improved through more extensive testing earlier in the development cycle, and delivery delays can be cut significantly.

. Enterprise Server – the production deployment platform from Micro Focus which enables mainframe applications to be re-hosted ”as-is” on to Windows, Unix or Linux servers and the cloud. By choosing where applications are hosted, organizations can achieve service delivery excellence, cut considerable execution costs and transform the value of applications for the business.

This end-to-end solution delivers freedom of choice without the need to replace mainframe applications with a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) package or re-write applications. In this way, Micro Focus can evolve mainframe systems with greater flexibility, lower cost, and with a solution that releases maximum value for an organization’s business.

To find out more about the Micro Focus Enterprise product set visit: http://www.microfocus.com/transform

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, 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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