Fujitsu Integrates COBOL in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET; Fujitsu COBOL continues to lead the way in Microsoft integration for COBOL applications

Business Wire, June 18, 2001

Business Editors and High Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2001

Fujitsu Software Corporation today announced at Microsoft Tech-Ed 2001, that, as a Microsoft Visual Studio Integration Partner, it is integrating its COBOL for Microsoft .NET product into the Visual Studio .NET environment. For COBOL programmers this represents an explosion in development environment functionality and provides the best user experience for targeting the Microsoft .NET Framework. For developers majoring in other languages, integrating legacy COBOL code is no longer a multiple-development-environment challenge.

"While many customers like the Fujitsu COBOL development environment, there are also many that have adopted Visual Studio as their development platform," said Ron Langer, Director of Languages, Fujitsu Software. "By bringing Fujitsu COBOL into the fold of Visual Studio .NET languages, Fujitsu will provide COBOL programmers with the industry standard development environment. With the additional partners who are working with Microsoft to integrate more tools with Visual Studio .NET, the increase in COBOL developer power is going to be significant."

As most major corporations are looking at how they can take advantage of their strategic COBOL application code in the Microsoft Windows and Microsoft .NET environments, not only COBOL programmers but also many programmers that aren't as familiar with COBOL are being exposed to COBOL. To date, that meant learning at least two different development environments in addition to understanding the COBOL code. With this announcement, Fujitsu Software removes that additional learning step by making Visual Studio .NET the common development environment.

"COBOL is an important language in many enterprises, and Fujitsu has a proven track record in the COBOL development world," said Tom Button, vice president, Developer Tools at Microsoft Corp. "We believe that the integration of COBOL with Visual Studio .NET will open up many new avenues and opportunities for corporations."

"It has been a pleasure working with a world class development platform," said Basim Kadhim, Chief Architect, COBOL Product Group, Fujitsu Software. "We have had to make a number of changes to our technology to make it integrate well with Visual Studio .NET, and have been encouraged by the quality of thinking that has gone into structuring the new environment. The end result of our integration work will be that COBOL will just be another language option within Visual Studio .NET. COBOL applications will be built using the same functions as Visual C# applications with all the features you would expect for a language integrated into this development environment."

Preview copies of Fujitsu COBOL for Visual Studio .NET are available from the Fujitsu COBOL Web site: http://www.adtools.com. Updates to this preview will be provided between now and the full release of the product following Microsoft's release of Visual Studio .NET.

About Fujitsu Software Corporation

Fujitsu Software Corporation, based in San Jose, California, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited. Fujitsu Software Corporation leverages Fujitsu's international scope and expertise in developing and providing information technology solutions. Fujitsu Software Corporation's products include the INTERSTAGE Application Server; as part of the INTERSTAGE ebusiness software platform built on open standards, the INTERSTAGE Application Server enables enterprises to build and run mission-critical applications; i-Flow, a 100% Java workflow engine for automating business processes; QoEtient, a service for monitoring and managing "Quality of Experience" on the Internet and Fujitsu COBOL, a COBOL development environment that provides an integrated development environment and a suite of tools to build fast, mission-critical business systems. For more information, visit http://www.fs.fujitsu.com.

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