SOLCORP Lifts and Shifts Flagship Policy Administration System to Microsoft .NET Framework with Micro Focus; Significantly Reduces Hardware and Infrastructure Costs for Insurance Companies

Business Wire, May 23, 2005

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Micro Focus(R) today announced from the 2005 ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum that SOLCORP, a leading provider of software solutions to the financial industries, and a subsidiary of EDS, has used Micro Focus Studio to deliver to its customers a powerful and more agile policy administration system at lower cost with minimal risk.

Originally written for the mainframe, SOLCORP's INGENIUM(R) now gives insurance companies the option of executing their policy administration systems on the lower cost, high performance Windows platform as a robust alternative, while preserving the business logic and process of COBOL technology. To meet customer demands, SOLCORP used Micro Focus Net Express with .NET, one of the products collectively known as Micro Focus Studio, to successfully certify the deployment of INGENIUM with policy volumes in excess of two million contracts on a 12-CPU Intel based machine on the Windows platform. The new product, INGENIUM .NET was launched in March 2005.

"The .NET platform is an increasingly cost-effective option for insurance companies faced with the challenge of reducing their IT costs while enhancing the performance of their policy administration systems," said Blair Goulet, senior vice president, strategy and global initiatives for SOLCORP. "SOLCORP'S INGENIUM customers can now deploy a robust and substantial policy administration system across the enterprise using the power of Micro Focus Net Express and exploiting the capabilities of the Microsoft .NET Framework."

INGENIUM customers can now standardize their policy administration on Windows across the enterprise and obtain increased agility by taking advantage of contemporary architectures, including Web services. The open design of INGENIUM .NET means that in addition to an HTML interface, COBOL business functionality can be accessed through published APIs, ACORD XML and Web services. SOLCORP migrated INGENIUM'S one million lines of mainframe COBOL code to .NET managed COBOL code which involved changes to less than one percent of the code.

"Micro Focus is a strategic tools partner of the Insurance Value Chain. Their 'Lift and Shift' approach for moving legacy COBOL applications to a Microsoft run-time environment is a critical offering for helping us change the operational experiences and business results of insurance companies looking to move to a lower-cost platform. Utilizing .NET, SOLCORP customers can now take advantage of the Microsoft platform that builds the foundation for simplified integration with customers, distributors and agents, without re-writing the entire application," said Kevin Kelly, managing director of Insurance for Microsoft's Financial Services Group. "Together, Micro Focus and Microsoft have provided a low-risk solution that enables SOLCORP to meet the demands of a growing number of insurance companies for more flexible and cost-effective applications."

"Micro Focus is committed to supporting the efforts of companies seeking to enhance the value of their IT investments," said Mike Gilbert, vice president of marketing and director of product strategy for Micro Focus. "Through Studio, Micro Focus unlocks the value of SOLCORP's INGENIUM to life insurance customers running the Windows platform at significantly reduced cost and enhances systems performance with minimal risk."

About SOLCORP

SOLCORP, a wholly owned subsidiary of EDS, is a global leader in software solutions and services for the life insurance and wealth management industries. SOLCORP solutions help customers reduce their total cost of administration, accelerate the introduction of new products to the market, and streamline infrastructure through the migration and consolidation of existing products.

SOLCORP / INGENIUM(R) is a high-performance, web services-enabled policy administration system that scales to high-volume environments, providing full-function processing for an extensive range of life and investment products. SOLCORP / ProductXpress(TM) is a scalable enterprise platform that allows IT to develop and implement reusable calculations across multiple applications.

Micro Focus - Unlocking the Value of Legacy(TM)

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, visit www.microfocus.com.

Micro Focus and Net Express are registered trademarks 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.