Six months of informal discussions have placed Micro Focus Plc in a position to launch a series of workstation-based solutions for the computer-aided software engineering market. The Newbury based Cobol company announced today that Arthur Young (IES) Ltd, Michael Jackson Systems Ltd, Index Technology Corp, Paris-based CGI Compagnie Generale d’Informatique, and Netron Inc, have agreed to base their assorted computer-aided software offerings around the Micro Focus Cobol Workbench – and the company hopes to be able to announce another Big Name joining the party any day now. According to Micro Focus’ European marketing manager Stuart McGill, the new alliances will provide users with instantaneous price-perfor-mance and flexibility gains, products which bridge the front-end/back-end technology division, and a platform for developing a second generation of computer-aided software engineering tools. In some instances, they will also serve to boost Micro Focus’ marketing and support activities overseas, where, with the exception of existing licensee Sage, the company relies on a network of distributors. At product level, the Arthur Young/KnowledgeWare initiative will couple the design workstation component of the company’s IEW Information Engineering Workbench with the Micro Focus Cobol/2 Workbench. Targeted at IBM mainframe environments, the move is designed to provide design, construction and proto-typing capabilities at MS DOS micro level. Design objects for testing or debugging at the Cobol workbench can either be passed directly, or via an IEW mainframe-based applications generator, Gamma. A similar deal has been struck with Michael Jackson Systems; a joint JSP Workbench offering will integrate Michael Jackson’s JSP-Tool design automation product with the Micro Focus workbench in a single shell, providing a powerful boost to programmer productivity. Meanwhile, with Index Technology – represented in the UK by Excelerator Software Pro-ducts Ltd – Micro Focus claims to have created the industry’s first MS-DOS micro-based workbench. By developing interfaces between Excelerator Software’s Excelerator analysis and design product and the Micro Focus Workbench, both parties now offer a workstation environment that supports application design, development, compilation and testing away from the mainframe. The Xl/Interface Micro Focus from Excelerator costs UKP450, with the Excelerator Interface from Micro Focus priced at UKP350; both products are available immediately. A more con-ventional marketing deal has been struck with Compagnie Generale d’Information. The French company will promote the use of Micro Focus’ Cobol/2 compiler and tools with its Pacbase automated tools package, to provide users with the means for dev-eloping distributed applications running on multi system environments. Finally, Micro Focus has announced that its Cobol/2 compiler is now compatible with the Cobol source code produced by the Netron/Cap Development Centre’s engineering system. Micro Focus argues that Netron/Cap users can now offload Cobol development and maintenance to the worksta-tion, where applications can be generated and tes-ted before being moved up to the mainframe. The agreements mark a transformation in Micro Focus Plc’s market profile, giving it the prospects of a much more solid revenue stream than heretofore.
