Micro Focus Survey Finds Government Agencies Building Mainframe Application Modernization into their 2011 Budgets

Rockville, MD – March 5, 2010 — Micro Focus® (LSE.MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, today unveiled findings from an informal survey it conducted with various government IT practitioners over the past three months. The survey asked these experts about their plans to modernize their critical mainframe applications, and if and when they planned to allocate budget to the task.

Among the survey’s findings, more than 72 percent of those surveyed said that they are planning to build application modernization into their budgets within the next six months to two years (40 percent planned to budget for modernization within six months to one year). Interestingly, despite the recent buzz around cloud computing, only 6 percent of those surveyed stated that they planned to adopt cloud computing as part of their modernization efforts. The top modernization objective cited by respondents was to move to web-enabled systems (54 percent), with Windows cited as their systems’ most likely platform (38 percent) after modernization.

In addition, long-term cost savings was noted as the most important benefit of modernization, with ease-of-use a close second. A respondent from GSA noted that business requirements are one of their organization’s most important motivators for application modernization, and that they are planning to budget for this effort within six months. GSA’s end objective is to take advantage of various open source tools.

“With IT spending basically flat under the proposed federal FY 2011 budget, agencies are feeling growing pressure to spend wisely and maximize return on their investments,” said Ken Powell, president of Micro Focus North America. “In the pursuit of Web 2.0 technologies, application modernization allows agencies to upgrade their legacy systems without replacing or rewriting core mission-critical applications, which can be expensive, risky, and time-consuming. Today, Micro Focus works closely with more than 6,000 customers throughout the public sector, helping them tackle modernization projects. These customers are finding that modernization can provide a practical, cost-effective step toward next-generation technologies like web-enabled systems and SOA, or cloud-enabling their IT assets as they move toward cloud computing.”

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.