Micro Focus to Provide the Latest in COBOL Development Technology for the Eclipse Platform

Business Wire, Nov 21, 2006

Offering to provide customers with increased development platform choices

ROCKVILLE, Md. & NEWBURY, England -- Micro Focus[R] (LSE:MCRO.L), a leading provider of enterprise application modernization software, today announces that it will support the Eclipse platform as part of its industry-leading COBOL development product lines.

Micro Focus will deliver the required plug-ins to enable rapid development of COBOL applications or composite Java/COBOL applications within the Eclipse Framework. Micro Focus is adding Eclipse support into its key products for Windows, UNIX, Linux, and mainframe application development. This will include existing Micro Focus facilities for creating Web services from existing applications, and will provide a unified Eclipse-based environment that will standardize the development of traditional workloads and facilitate the move to Service Oriented Architectures (SOA).

Micro Focus support for Eclipse will offer enterprise application development teams a consistent Integrated Development Environment (IDE) regardless of where the application is to be deployed, while taking advantage of the efficiencies inherent in Eclipse to offer best-of-breed productivity.

Micro Focus is already an Add-In Provider member of the Eclipse Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation formed to advance the creation, evolution, promotion and support of Eclipse. This announcement means Micro Focus will accelerate its Eclipse integration, a move based on the growing popularity of Eclipse and on an increase in demand from its customer base.

Eclipse support within Micro Focus' distributed COBOL development products, Net Express[R] (for Windows) and Server Express[TM] (for UNIX and Linux) is targeted for delivery during the second quarter of 2007. Eclipse support for Micro Focus' IBM mainframe application development environment, Mainframe Express[R] Enterprise Edition, will follow. Micro Focus will open an Early Adopter Program for its Eclipse integration capabilities in the first quarter of 2007.

"Micro Focus is committed to delivering highly productive COBOL development platforms that offer our customers choice among all leading IDEs," said Stuart McGill, vice president of worldwide marketing at Micro Focus. "We already offer our customers the ability to embrace the market leading Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and I'm delighted that today we can answer the requests of our customers who wish to standardize on the Eclipse platform by announcing our intent to add Eclipse support into our current product suite."

"Eclipse's goal is to create a multi-language development platform that increases efficiency in enterprise software development," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. "As the largest vendor of COBOL solutions off the mainframe, Micro Focus' announcement today is great news for COBOL programmers who can now look forward to enjoying the benefits of the Eclipse Platform while developing, extending and modernizing their enterprise applications."

About Micro Focus

Micro Focus provides innovative software that helps companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications. Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization software enables customers' business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk. For more information please visit www.microfocus.com.

Micro Focus, Net Express and Mainframe Express are registered trademarks and Server Express is a trademark of Micro Focus. All other products mentioned in this announcement are trademarks of their respective owners.