Micro Focus Live

"Java is COBOL" - Maybe, maybe not

2009-06-25T01:38:00.000-07:00

Mike Rozlog makes some very interesting points in his article regarding the possible future of Java given the Oracle/Sun situation. As he says, he has likened Java to COBOL "...because almost every business today has some sort of Java somewhere doing something." He's quite right - COBOL and Java are present in just about every organization or transaction you can find.

However the key points in the post about the travails Java has been going through highlight a key difference. Whereas Java has been effectively owned by a single vendor, albeit with a process for requesting and making enhancements, it's never really benefited from an open standard that was, from the very beginning 50 years ago, driven by both vendors and users.

That process has ensured that users haven't had vendor lock-in (unless they considered the value of proprietary extensions worth the risk). We're seeing similar issues arising with the on-going discussions re vendor lock-in in the Cloud which is one of the key issues cited by IT managers when discussing their future plans for the Cloud. For COBOL, there has also been healthy competition between providers to ensure the language keeps moving forward - that has allowed the language to evolve incredibly with every changing shift in IT technology from big-iron mainframes, through Client/Server to .NET and Java.

Has the pace of change slowed down? Maybe. However looking at what we're working on at Micro Focus, I don't see that's the case. The Developer Showcase presentation on Micro Focus Live gives a flavour of some of that work.

I've no doubt Java will be around for a long time to come, however it seems every week there is a new contender to its crown. It will need to find a way to replicate the long-term success of COBOL if it is to stay relevant and that will probably involve handing ownership of the standard to an independent body and a process allowing both vendors and users to drive its evolution.

In the meantime, COBOL will continue to flourish and evolve for the next generation.

Lambda The Ultimate Perform

2009-05-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

COBOL.net from Micro Focus is such a powerful tool - I just keep raving about it!

Guy Lewis Steele, Jr.. "Debunking the 'Expensive Procedure Call' Myth, or, Procedure Call Implementations Considered Harmful, or, Lambda: The Ultimate GOTO". MIT AI Lab. AI Lab Memo AIM-443. October 1977

The above paper discusses how anonymous functions can provide a very flexible and powerful way of manipulating control flow in a program without the ugly and dangerous imperative notion of GOTO. COBOL has its own notion of GOTO, the PERFORM verb. However, PERFORM in modern COBOL can be very 'nice' and not have any GOTO like behaviour; for example:


                perform varying counter from 1 by 1 until counter > 100
                    set str to String::"Format"("Hello World {0}" counter)
                    set anAction to new type "System.Action"
                    (
                       delegate
                           add 1 to delCounter
                           invoke type "System.Console"::"WriteLine"(String::"Format"("{0} -> {1}," type "System.Threading.Thread"::"CurrentThread"::"ManagedThreadId" delCounter))
                       end-delegate
                    )
                    invoke actions::"Add"(anAction)
                end-perform

Nevertheless, it would also be very cool indeed have lambda functions (from Lambda calculus) in COBOL. The above example is a bit of a cheat, because it gives a hint on how to do exactly that in Micro Focus managed COBOL. A delegate is a way of referencing a method dynamically. I.E. the method it references is chosen at runtime, not compile time. This makes a delegate somewhat like a lambda. However, when a delegate is anonymous it has no method name associated with it, only code. An anonymous delegate is a lambda. The above block of COBOL is creating lambda functions.

Moving From Lambda To Closure

In reality, the anonymous delegates in MF COBOL are actually closures. It is a common misconception that all lambdas are closures. For a lambda to be a closure it must enclose state from where it is created. Anonymous delegates in MF COBOL enclose the local storage of the method in which they are created.

COBOL And Generics

MF managed COBOL works out the box with generics. Generics are just like templates in C++ and represent a compile time polymorphism mechanism. Thus, collections can be strongly typed (for example). This has the benefit of more secure coding practices and potentially faster runtimes:



01 actions       type "System.Collections.Generic.List"[type "System.Action"].

The above local storage declaration (variable definition) shows MF COBOL.net generics syntax. The square bracketed type at the end of the declaration causes the compiler to define the List collection as being a list of System.Action objects. I am using System.Action as it is a general purpose delegate class the constructor of which acts as a very good way of creating general purpose anonymous delegates in COBOL.net.

Iterating over collections


        perform varying anAction through actions
            set aWorker to new "AdvancedFeatures.Worker"(anAction)
            set thread-start to new "System.Threading.ThreadStart"(aWorker::"Work"())
            set aThread to new Type "System.Threading.Thread"(thread-start)
            invoke aThread::"Start"()
        end-perform

This piece of code uses perform to iterate over the generic list we created earlier. It does this using the 'though' keyword. This perform looping construct also launches new threads. Those threads will then use the delegates which we created earlier.

Putting it all together

So here is a throw away example program which uses anonymous delegates as closures and multi-threading (the .net way) and generics with iterators. Please note that there is a full threading syntax build into MF COBOL as well; so if you do not want to use the .net class library you can use the MF COBOL syntax. I might blog on that another time.


      $Set SourceFormat "FREE".
       program-id. Program1 as "AdvancedFeatures.Program1".

       environment division.
       configuration section.
       repository.
       
       data division.
       working-storage section.
        01 manager type "AdvancedFeatures.Manager".
       procedure division.
            set manager to new type "AdvancedFeatures.Manager"
            invoke manager::"RunWorkflow"()
            goback.
            
       end program Program1.

       class-id. Manager as "AdvancedFeatures.Manager".
        object.
        method-id "RunWorkflow" public.
            local-storage section.
            01 thread-start  type "System.Threading.ThreadStart".
            01 aThread       type "System.Threading.Thread".
            01 anAction      type "System.Action".
            01 aWorker       type "AdvancedFeatures.Worker".
            01 actions       type "System.Collections.Generic.List"[type "System.Action"].
            01 str           string.
            01 counter       binary-long.
            01 delCounter    binary-long.
            procedure division.
                move 0 to delCounter
                set actions to new "System.Collections.Generic.List"[type "System.Action"]
                perform varying counter from 1 by 1 until counter > 100
                    set str to String::"Format"("Hello World {0}" counter)
                    set anAction to new type "System.Action"
                    (
                       delegate
                           add 1 to delCounter
                           invoke type "System.Console"::"WriteLine"(String::"Format"("{0} -> {1}," type "System.Threading.Thread"::"CurrentThread"::"ManagedThreadId" delCounter))
                       end-delegate
                    )
                    invoke actions::"Add"(anAction)
                end-perform
            
                perform varying anAction through actions
                    set aWorker to new "AdvancedFeatures.Worker"(anAction)
                    set thread-start to new "System.Threading.ThreadStart"(aWorker::"Work"())
                    set aThread to new Type "System.Threading.Thread"(thread-start)
                    invoke aThread::"Start"()
                end-perform
                goback.
        end method "RunWorkflow".
        end object.
       end class Manager.

       class-id. Worker as "AdvancedFeatures.Worker".

        object.
        working-storage section.
            77 aDelegate type "System.Delegate".        
        
        method-id new public.
            procedure division using by value toCall as type "System.Action".
            set aDelegate to toCall.
        end method new.
        
        method-id "Work" public.               
            procedure division.
          
                invoke aDelegate::"DynamicInvoke"(null)

        end method "Work".
        
        end object.
       end class Worker.

Gartner's Dale Vecchio on options for Modernization

2009-05-12T08:24:00.000-07:00

Many of you will know Dale Vecchio, Gartner's long time commentator on IT modernization. Well, for MF Live, he has produced a couple of presentations for us and I wanted to draw your attention to some of his comments from the second of these, where Dale is considering the options available to companies for modernizing their IT, and the benefits they should expect.

At the outset, Dale highlights the need for companies to get a better understanding of their applications, and has the following to say...

"Nowadays, you can find productivity tools for developing COBOL applications that are as productive as any we’ve seen. The ability to understand your application inventory, to create sort of a ‘bill of materials’ structure that helps you see the relationships between programs, between programs and screens, or programs and files, to be able to see how data flows throughout your application, those are readily available from a number of organizations, certainly including Micro Focus, that help you do more with less. Organizations have been somewhat reluctant to spend money on these technologies and I don’t understand why. You would expect a 30% – 40% productivity improvement just through the use of these tools. Any organization that’s going to continue to manage its portfolio on their existing infrastructure over the next 5 years is crazy not to evaluate these tools. The ability to implement changes, to understand the impact of that change, to reduce the risk of failure, to reduce downtime, to prove the quality of those applications, goes up tremendously when you leverage these tools."

Take a look at the video, and you'll hear Dale talking about many other strategies for cost saving and productivity gains, not to mention managing skills, and improving business alignment.

And feel free to post your comments afterwards...

Julian

Gearing up for Day 2 of Micro Focus Live! Find out what you are missing...

2009-05-12T06:10:00.000-07:00

We are just gearing up for Day 2 of Micro Focus Live. We started with a very ambitious goal of having a truely global event, and it makes us so proud to have done so! But only, I did not realise it will involve me staying awake for over 26 hours at a stretch!

But all that hardly matters, when you hear such positive feedback from the customers. here is what one of them posted in the forums:

“I'm planning to have two good days in front of the PC. The idea of having the conference over the Internet is brilliant, and the technical parts have worked perfectly so far. Keep up the good work :-).”

It is feedback like this that makes all our effor totally worth it!

We have had over 1200 users log in last 24 hours! Over 58 threads with bustling discussions, there is no more joy than seeing one of our biggest virtual projects come to life.

Thank you to everybody for your support so far and hope you continue to benefit from the content and the platform. If you have not yet signed up or signed in, dont miss this opportunity.

We will be back live at 10 AM Central US time again.

So, see you then - on your DESKTOP!

David Chappell: "Beautiful Poetry Of COBOL in the Cloud" #MFL09

2009-05-12T01:26:00.000-07:00

There are a number of great analyst presentations at Micro Focus Live but one of my favorites is the one by David Chappell. David is well known as an industry commentator and has spent a lot of time looking at Cloud platforms and potential impacts.

He made a lot of comments that I thought were fascinating, a few of the highlights:

In the last 50 years, there have been 5 major platforms from mainframe to distributed. The 6th major platform is just emerging – The Cloud
There is a major challenge for internal IT groups – the Data Center is a bottleneck “Internal IT is about to be faced by a massive competitor, the like of which it’s never seen before.” (this could be the main message)
He identifies the major inhibitor to moving to the Cloud, based on his discussions with potential users as “security” – of applications and data. As he says “building trust will take time but if the incentives are big enough, that trust will be built” and compares the current state of Cloud-trustworthiness with where we were with outsourcing 30 years ago.
“COBOL in the Cloud has a beautiful poetry” (My favorite quote!) The Cloud is being perceived as the “mainframe of the future” and having COBOL there is a beautiful fit.
He is sure that some part of every IT department’s future is in the Cloud and recommends actions to understand the potential issues & benefits.

In summary – “This is a great time to be in application development. The 6th platform is happening right now and it’s a great time to be in the application development business”

I recommend you view the session and let us know what you think via the Micro Focus Live forums

http://online.microfocuslive.com

#MFL09 Day 1 Round Up

2009-05-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

So Day 1 of Micro Focus Live (at least for the Americas region) is over. Europe/India and APAC all start tomorrow.

I have to say, it's all gone better than I might have hoped for. The main conference content went live exactly on schedule at 10am Dallas time (the originally planned venue) with Stephen Kelly's keynote and continued through live discussion panels covering business and development topics. In addition to the panels, the conference on-demand content was completed with the posting of customer and analyst videos - some fantastic stories which I'll cover in other postings.

The platform worked flawlessly, streaming the video, live audio, question streams and chat rooms. Let's hope that continues for the next few days.

Hundreds of attendees took part and the live chat sessions were very busy running in parallel to the content - that kind of "talking in class" wouldn't really be acceptable during a physical event - an example of something that can only be done "virtually" perhaps? (Is this an example of augmented reality?)

Can a virtual conference really take the place of a live event? Well in many ways it's better - more participation, more interactivity, content that can be re-viewed and re-used, delivered when it suits the attendee rather than the presenter, and much more. However there are some things that perhaps can't be done on-line - face to face chats are often the best form of communication. But overall, it seems to be a pretty good alternative.

Actually, there is one aspect of the physical conference we can't quite replicate - the late night solving of problems over a beer (or several!). Perhaps that's not such a bad thing - my liver will be happy at least!

http://online.microfocuslive.com

Day 1 Micro Focus Live comes to a close - what a great day!

2009-05-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

Day 1, its finally here and its over! And wow! What a day! Let me say that again. WOW! WHAT A DAY!

There was excitement, energy, curiosity, questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, ideas and more than everything else great enthusiasm!

Thank you to everyone who joined us today. It was absolutely brilliant to "meet" you online today! Although we would have loved to see the smiles on your faces, your comments and text in the chat rooms said it all!

If you have missed today, I am sorry to say you have missed a lot! But not to worry, we still have 2 more days of great content and lots of exciting announcements coming up.

In the meantime, you can continue your discussions and post questions in the forums. Take some time to look at the on demand sessions, and come back and join us tomorrow, to continue your journey with Micro Focus, LIVE!

See you tomorrow, once again - on your DESKTOP!

Great Industry Analyst content available on MF Live

2009-05-11T02:51:00.000-07:00

So, MF Live has arrived, and I wanted to take this opportunity to draw your attention to some great content and panel sessions. As head of analyst relations for Micro Focus, it's always good to meet so many industry experts, to hear their thoughts and debate the priority issues affecting our customers. As an MF Live attendee, you have the chance to hear them too, as they take you through a veritable alphabet of interesting subjects - all the way from APM to zSeries modernization!

We have Dale Vecchio from Gartner, speaking on the impact of the economy for IT, and the things we need to be doing to make sure we come out on top.

We have Jim Johnson, chairman and founder of the Standish Group. Jim will be speaking on driving the costs out of IT, and will also be participating in our live panel on Safeguarding IT Assets - where he'll be sharing his thoughts on why latest research shows that IT's failure rate is on the increase.

And we have John Rymer, from Forrester Research, taking us into the Cloud - explaining the benefits... and some of the risks... of taking enterprise applications 'off premise', and why the CFO should be so interested.

So, head along to the MF Live site and take a look. And feel free to send me any comments or thoughts you have on what you hear.

Best regards,

Julian

3...2...1...Online! Micro Focus Live comes to your Desktop, LIVE Today!

2009-05-11T02:28:00.000-07:00

Fasten your seat belts and prepare for your journey into the Future! Its here, finally! 11th May 2009, Micro Focus Live comes to your Desktop!

And what a build up it has been! The Micro Focus Live team has absolutely enjoyed working on this projects, and we spent long hours working on every little details to make this journey as pefect as possible for you. We really appreciate the support you have all shown us so far, and with over 3000 registrations to the event - is simply the most amazing response!

Over the next 3 days we will be delivering a series of live Keynotes and Discussion Panel sessions, covering an array of topics. From Modernization, latest COBOL development tools and its future to Data Management, and the ultimate cost efficiency stratgy - the CLOUD!

So we will be kicking of today with a Key Note from Stephen Kelly, our CEO, followed by a live business discussion panel on Cloud Computing. Dont miss the Developer panels on COBOL Futures and Developer tools!

So get plugged in - and enjoy the show. Oh yes, dont forget to leave loads of comments - we would love to hear from you.

Micro Focus Live - a global event

2009-05-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

Do you know how many different countries/locations are participating in Micro Focus Live?

I'm coming to the end of a week where most of it seems to have been spent reviewing either pre-recorded presentations or preparing for the live content for next week's event. I've just realized that I've been watching presentations and videos by Micro Focus staff, analysts, industry commentators and, especially, customers from the following locations (in no particular order):

San Diego CA, Mountain View CA, Singapore, New Delhi, Madrid, Sydney, Raleigh NC, St. Petersburg FL, Redmond WA, Rockville MA, France, Brazil, Italy, Foster City CA, San Francisco CA and, of course, Newbury.

I'm sure I've missed a few but I think this gives some idea of just how geographically dispersed the whole team is. Looking at the registrations we've had so far, it looks like every continent will be represented by the attendees (OK, perhaps representation from Antartica will be a little light!)

This truely is a global event and we could never have had such broad participation with a physical event.

Meet the COBOLATOR, exclusively at Micro Focus Live!

2009-05-08T03:01:00.001-07:00

This is by far the most exciting project I have worked on - I must admit. It was a lot of fun, and it has been lovely watching it come together. What you ask?! I can let you in on too much just yet, but here is a little teaser. Meet the COBOLATOR!

It will be premiering exclusively on Micro Focus Live on the 11th May! So if you have not signed up yet, Sign up FREE now!

The Cloud - it will affect you ...

2009-05-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

I've been reviewing a lot of Micro Focus Live presentations and videos from industry experts and customers that have already started work on their Cloud deployments over the past few days ready for the full launch on May 11th.

I've noticed some very clear themes emerging:

The drive is on in IT to cut costs. I know - that's a "duh!" statement but it is real and, whatever concerns some organizations may have about making the move to the Cloud, they all agree that the benefits of "pay as you go", scalable resources, shifting from Capital Expense to Operating Expense, or outsourcing non-critical systems are all real opportunities to cut costs and maintain or improve services
There are concerns about vendor lock-in and data security but the tipping point where those concerns are outweighed by cost or flexibility benefits varties across systems and some applications or organizations will be able to move more quickly than others
At some point in the next 3 - 5 years, everyone involved with IT today will have something in their portfolio affected by the Cloud.

OK, nothing particularly earth shattering here but it is clear that there is a wide variety of experience and information being provided at Micro Focus Live and for anyone trying to work out what the potential benefits and opportunities, as well as how to make the move with the least risk this really is a unique collection of great resources.

2000 registered and counting! Are you willing to miss out?!

2009-04-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

I am so delighted to say the number of registrations has crossed the 2000 mark today! Hurray!

Thank you to every one of you who has signed up to show support for this event. For those who have been putting this off - are you sure you want to miss out on this?!

We have several exciting new speakers confirmed. We have David Chappell appearing, for those of you who have heard him speak before - isn't he amazing?! I was reading on his website earlier, and it mentioned a quote from Don Cox about how much he loved listening to him.

Lets not forget, Eddie Amos, Bob Ellsworth appearing from Microsoft. Brian Wallace from CSC, Jim Johnson from Standish Group, and Dale Vecchio from Gartner. All of them live, and online directly to your Desktop! Exclusively at Micro Focus Live.

So if you have not signed up yet, and dont want to miss out on all the great content, speakers, excitement and buzz - its not too late. Sign up now at: www.microfocuslive.com.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that you could still be in with a chance to win a Guitar Hero game if you sign up now?! So what are you waiting for?! www.microfocuslive.com

"Java is the new COBOL" - well done Java!

2009-04-27T00:43:00.001-07:00

Apparently Java is becoming the new COBOL (see http://bit.ly/YiGrU)

Coming from someone working for a COBOL company you might expect a certain point of view - and I'm not going to disappoint! I suspect the article was trying to associate Java with the perceived weaknesses (only perceived, definitely not real) of COBOL - being "old fashioned" and slow to embrace new technologies.

However, I will offer some defence of Java and take this comparison with COBOL as a positive thing - it has tried to replicate the amazing success of COBOL in several ways:

Common language across many, many platforms
"Write once, run anywhere" (but remember Micro Focus was doing this with COBOL Intermediate Code in the mid-1970s - way before Java byte code became popular)
A huge infrastructure of supporting tools, training, staff, etc.

It was these attributes that made Gartner put COBOL in the "mature" category a little while ago - not aging. Definitely not a bad thing - this is what commercial organizations need, especially in these challenging times. If Java can do the same, then it is being successful.

However, Java did drop the ball in a number of key areas where COBOL is still superior:

True cross-platform compatibility - a strong standards organization enforce source compatibility.
Keeping the language current - a single vendor with little/no competition doesn't move the language forward quickly enough. The commuity process was supposed to make things faster but, in effect, the move forward has stalled.
Incompatible run time engines and complexity of systems such J2EE have hampered deployments. JVMs from different vendors had too many quirks to allow application vendors to safely assume their application would be of high quality/performance on every platform
Now that the language is essentially owned by a database company, what's going to happen next?

This isn't intended to a Java-bashing article. Far from it, I think it still has a lot of life and has value but I think it's worth remembering that COBOL has been, and continues to be, wildly successful and if Java can get close to that, then good luck to it.

Are your developers getting good test data but not sensitive information?

2009-04-23T09:38:00.001-07:00

Reliability is a key IT requirement, we all live with the reality that production systems need to be solid and changes made to those systems need to be stable from day 1. Getting that level of stability is key to the job we do as IT professionals, one key element of that is testing and of course testing needs test data. Developers or QA Staff creating artificial or synthetic data for unit and functional testing is a good thing, but you need to know also that when you hit the button at the end of the day to put the application live you won’t be getting an unwelcome phone call a few hours later, that means you need to test your application changes with the circumstances the code will hit when it goes live. That’s why according to a survey of 240 major European users 71% used production derived data as part of the testing process – great for quality but what about Data Privacy?

In fact use of real data in a non-production context can be somewhat of a disaster for data privacy, sensitive data on Developers machines, data sticks and so forth is a recipe for non-compliance to both national legislation and industry regulation. But what is sensitive data? We’d all immediately identify that credit card numbers, bank account numbers and so forth are sensitive, but actually any data that contains “personal identity information” such as names, addresses, ethnicity, political views and so forth is potentially subject to laws and regulation such as HIPAA, PCI DSS and many more.

The solution to this is Data Masking – not the clearest of terms (often also called Data Obfuscation, Data De-identification or Data De-sensitisation) where data is substituted or other appropriately contextually aware data so that what was information is turned into pure data without meaning as information, but still realistic for testing (or training purposes). With Data Masking, as well as strong context-sensitive substitution and masking algorithms the key is completeness and consistency, you need to mask all the relevant fields not just a few and you need to mask them consistently across multiple data stores on many platforms. It’s important to build a complete picture of all the data structures and characteristics within an IT infrastructure so that for example all instances of SSN’s (Social Security Numbers or National Insurance numbers) are masked consistently and correctly. Bottom Line : Developers get good test data but not sensitive information.

If you have a need to either mask and/or subset production data used for testing or other non production purposes then you may find the sessions at Micro Focus Live on Data Express of interest or see www.microfocus.com/products/dataexpress for more information.

Comments Welcome!

Understand the Applications that Run Your Business

2009-04-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

Every major business process in your company is built on sophisticated applications. As a result, the stability of your business is often tied to the stability of your applications. So, how can you make sure that the applications that run your business are matched with the goals of your business -- goals like risk-avoidance.

One key way is to understand your applications. These applications have developed over the course of years or even decades, growing in size and complexity. In fact, many have become so complex that it is difficult for your IT team to adapt these systems to support new requirements. For instance, to support a new product line or to eliminate redundant functions following a merger. Making changes to applications without adequately understanding the repercussions is a recipe for problems. Uniformed changes could lead to a temporary outage of your operations… which is an unacceptable loss.

But your business processes must change, and that means that your applications must change. So, how do you overcome complexity? It is by understanding the structure and behavior of your applications. Armed with business intelligence about the structure and function of your applications, managers can better choose priorities for development teams. And developers can ensure that the changes they make won’t affect other core systems.

At Micro Focus Live, we’ll take a look at this concept of application understanding from both the management side and the technical side. You’ll learn how managers can plan modernization activities that yield the biggest returns for your business. And you’ll see how development teams can quickly deliver on these requirements, emptying their development queues.

Fresh on-demand content arriving daily

2009-04-22T06:35:00.001-07:00

I've just been reviewing the first batch of on-demand recordings for the Micro Focus Live event. Considering we have over 60 sessions, 7 keynotes, 18 discussion panels (and a number of surprises) planned, creating and manging this content is a major effort.

In fact, it's pretty remarkable is that we can even try to do this. With such a geopgraphically dispersed team (I think we have contributions from every continent bar Antartica!), the ability to capture presentations (including slides, demos, audio and, for some, video) across the web, publish them from a common library and then to make it all available for free (for attendees) is staggering.

OK, is it TV or Hollywood broadcast quality? Perhaps not (although some of it definitely is). Is it full of good content delivered by technology experts not marketing talking heads? Absolutely yes. I think that is probably more important than delivering HD with 5.1 surround sound - but perhaps we'll try that next year (I can hear the sound of the project team leader falling off her chair as I write!)

If you haven't signed up yet, I'll repeat what I've said before - get registered now. There's no point waiting until the last minute. The first content starts getting published in the next couple of weeks so not long to wait now!

Photo: Flickr — Wiedmaier

Variety is the spice of Micro Focus Live

2009-04-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

As a "theme host" for the Micro Focus Live 09 conference, I've been pretty focussed on the developer-related topics that will be presented. I very excited about the amount of content we're delivering there - and mostly presented by our developers. Don't expect the most polished, professional oratory but do expect great technical content.

However, as we're getting closer to the launch date, I've been taking another look at the wider conference agenda and even I'm somewhat surprised but the variety of content that is being offered. For example:

Addressing the big business issues - reducing costs, addressing IT skills shortages, managing mergers & acquisitions, preparing for the potentially disruptive impact of "The Cloud" and more
Best practices of running development teams - e.g. SCRUM methodologies, lessons learned, etc.
Analysts providing their external view of the state of IT and the opportunities/challenges that coming.
Customers presenting their view of the business issues and how they've worked with a variety of Micro Focus tools, technologies and staff to solve their problems.

I'm not sure there is any other forum that could cover such a breadth and depth of content. Add to that the fact that it is a global event - we are preparing specific content targetted at different regions which will talk to local issues.

And don't forget the price - it's free!

All content will be available on-demand for registered users although some will be available "live" first with on-demand access afterwards. There will also be chances to interact with the team via live questions during panels and discussion rooms.

If you haven't taken a look, now is the time to visit the site and get on board.

1000 Registrations and counting! Have you signed up yet?!

2009-04-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

Micro Focus Live now has over 1000 registrations and counting! Thank you everyone for your support and we look forward to welcoming you on the 11th May!

Are you yet to sign up? Why wait?! There are plenty of good reasons to sign up now. What are they you ask me? Well, you can access a number of white papers, and analyst research notes worth hundreds of $$$ completely free of charge. Our event agenda is now live!

And if that doesnt do it for you, you could be in with a chance to win the all new Guitar Hero Wii Game!

Dont miss out, sign up today. And oh yes, its completely FREE! Click here to sign up.

Modernization techniques for cost savings

2009-04-16T06:38:00.000-07:00

Looking at ways to cut costs? Pretty much every industry is feeling the pinch and looking at ways to tighten budgets and drive efficiencies. The good news for everyone is that IT modernization offers great opportunities for businesses to achieve significant savings! Interested? Heard it all before? Sceptical? Let me help persuade you.

First let’s talk about what I mean by modernization, as this word can mean different things to different people.

Modernization to me is a constant cycle of continually improving applications and processes in order to achieve business goals. As already discussed, one of the key business goals at the moment is to reduce costs, but modernization projects can help in many other areas as well such as enabling increased productivity, improving user experience or speeding time to market with new products. Or maybe IT compliance and governance is more of a concern?

But for today, let’s focus on cutting costs – how can modernization help IT reduce costs whilst still offering an excellent service to the business? One of the quickest wins that can achieve real savings today is to look at consolidating the platforms that you manage. Running old proprietary mainframe platforms can be expensive - both in terms of skills to manage and the operational expenses associated with maintenance contracts and the software running on them. Migrating from one platform to another can generate some huge cost savings and it’s not as difficult as you may think. So what about an example to back this up? UBS recently consolidated all its Unisys mainframes and applications onto the IBM z/OS platform with over 98% of the applications being migrated automatically. Estimated savings? – 100m Euros!

The z/OS platform (for all the good things it has going about it) can itself be very expensive to own and operate. As businesses grow and there is increased demand on applications, the processing power of the mainframe often has to be extended. Increasing the number of MIPS has a knock on effect on the licensing of other software and applications that run on the mainframe resulting in some seriously unwelcomed increases in operational costs.

There are various ways to reduce costs here. The first option is to migrate one or more applications off the mainframe onto a lower cost platform (e.g. Microsoft Windows), thus reducing the number of MIPS needed and therefore lowering the operational costs of the mainframe. Another option could be to do testing and development of applications off mainframe, again with the effect of reducing the number of MIPS consumed. The most interesting option which z/OS users now have access to is to carry on running applications on the mainframe hardware, but rather than have them running on z/OS, moving them to the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) - basically z/Linux running on IBM mainframe hardware. Why do this? Applications that run on IFL do not impact the MSU or MIPS rating of the mainframe, meaning that any applications moved to IFL are basically saving MIPS cost. And the best thing is, you still get to utilize your existing IBM hardware with all the benefits that go with it (security, scalability etc).

Looking at what this means in cold hard numbers the savings can be substantial. Micro Focus recently helped one of the largest US organizations move a 4000 MIP z/OS application over to the IFL, with no loss in performance or capability giving them a $6m a year saving in their operational costs. Not bad hey? Even better, this migration was done in a matter of months and with the return on investment delivered in much the same amount of time. This organization can also now continue to grow this core application at a fraction of the cost than if it had remained on z/OS.

Hopefully you can now see how the platform migration aspect of IT modernization can help generate serious cost savings. In my next post I’ll talk about some other areas of modernization which can achieve equally as attractive savings - User interface modernization & programming productivity solutions.

Development Environment "State of the Nation"

2009-04-15T08:30:00.001-07:00

Is this your idea of a development environment?

Perhaps not!!!

Things have certainly moved on over the last 50 years. Today Micro Focus has a range of development environments across multiple platforms each one tuned to the efficient development and deployment of COBOL. In general, the entire programming world is consolidating around either Microsoft’s Visual Studio or Eclipse and Micro Focus now has great COBOL programmer support in both.

At Micro Focus Live, I’m going to be reviewing the current status of COBOL development environments and taking a look at the current drivers in the industry and how they are affecting our plans for COBOL development going forward. This session will be of interest to any Micro Focus users whether they are currently using RM COBOL, ACUCOBOL, Micro Focus COBOL or deploying applications to IBM Mainframes.

I promise the future development environment won’t involve valves or patch boards (although I suspect there are a few people around that will be disappointed to hear that!)

Do you make development decisions based on instinct or facts?

2009-04-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

A recent study by the IEEE revealed that managers tend to make development decisions based largely on instinct. But in today’s highly complex IT environments, you must prioritize based on harder data. Further, with large global development teams, you need to ensure that you are constantly monitoring for adherence to service level agreements. You can govern these portfolios when you have access to sufficient insight into your applications. Let’s take a look at typical information sources for making intelligent portfolio management decisions.

First, you need to ensure that decisions about the application portfolio are understood in a business light. This means surveying stakeholders to determine which activities will yield the most value to your organization. Micro Focus technologies allow you to create browser-based questionnaires to solicit views from opinion-makers throughout the organization. How valuable is a business process? Are there frequent outages of a particular application? Which business process matters most? These details help you to better sequence your massive development queue.

Second, you may need information from other technologies to help buttress your decision-making. For instance, it may be important to determine where bugs are arising in your applications. This may lead you to match code quality issues and resulting renovation projects better. Or, you may look at costs to maintain an application and match these costs with the complexity of a given application. This can help to determine which teams may need to be reinforced.

Third, you may need to have insights into measurements about the quality of your application code. Measures like cyclomatic complexity and size are important metrics that help determine where and how much effort should be focused by development teams.

The degree to which you emphasize the collection of different metrics will vary depending on how your business measures itself. Ideally, you will want to combine measurements to answer different management questions that support your governance of the development organization.

Importantly, these metrics should be combined based on business concepts that matter to you.
Your control over your application portfolio is stronger when measurements are filtered by groupings like business process, geography, or development team. If you can show that complexity is rising in a mission-critical business process or software quality is declining in code managed by an outsourcer, you can make better fact-based decisions about your application portfolio.

At Micro Focus Live, we'll look in detail at the idea of governing your application portfolio and how Micro Focus technologies can streamline the process.

Watch: Our latest MFL Promo video!

2009-04-15T05:19:00.000-07:00

The latest MFL promo video is now online!

As I have been reiterating in my previous posts, we want to make the Micro Focus Live experience, a little different and as special as possible. So we thought, we will create something fun, and inline with the theme of Micro Focus Live. And hence our latest effort, hope you enjoy watching this as much as we enjoyed making it!

Good News Cuts Through Murky Waters – Cost Reduction

2009-04-15T02:18:00.000-07:00

Guernsey Electricity needed to reduce its dependence upon increasingly scarce ICL mainframe skills, while at the same time cut costs and increase performance. The company decided to migrate its core business applications from a mainframe to a Windows environment. The utility’s business-critical MIDAS application, the primary source of customer information used by up to 150 employees each day, had been developed in-house in ICL ApplicationMaster and COBOL - its functionality very popular with users. Working with Micro Focus Net Express with .NET and Server Express for .NET along with consultancy and software tools from Blue Phoenix, Guernsey Electricity’s system was successfully migrated to Windows without any change to end-user functionality.

As well as achieving its primary goals the project improved batch performance, reducing run times by 50%. The company, which is the sole provider of electrical power on the island of Guernsey, will reduce application operating costs by 70%.

READ MORE

Expanding the Horizons of Data Privacy and Subsetting

2009-04-14T08:37:00.001-07:00

As the Product Manager for Data Express at Micro Focus one of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked in the last year is “What about X?”. If you’ve got to mask your test data for compliance to PCI, HIPAA, the EU Data Directive, etc. then of course you’ve got to mask all of it – that includes not only major Data Stores like DB2 and Oracle but COBOL Files, Sybase, MySQL and even XML amongst many. At the same time the compliance need is real and significant regardless of whether you happen to have a mainframe or not, data is data regardless of the platform it’s stored on. With the latest release of Data Express http://www.microfocus.com/products/dataexpress/ we’ve taken away the mainframe dependency and added an ODBC Extension – almost all the data stores you can imagine on Windows, UNIX and Linux have an ODBC Driver and this enables consistent Data Masking across all those platforms.

To go back a step - Why Mask? That’s a legitimate question and certainly typical production systems have many secure layers around them, but what about development systems and testing? When real data is used for testing you can potentially create an open back door to data privacy and security.

I also put Subsetting in the title of this blog, and that’s because using real data in testing may be the right thing to do for quality, but as well as having sensitive information often it’s huge. Managing additional copies of that data and trying to turn it into meaningful can be a very resource intensive and time consuming process – an automated and repeatable system that gives you much reduced but still realistic test data can save a lot of time and money.

Well, more about some of these topics in later blogs and of course at Micro Focus Live, meantime discussion on this blog forum is very welcome.

The Guardian: 50 years on, COBOL is still going strong

2009-04-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

The Guardian tech recently featured an article on COBOL celebrating its 50th Anniversary. If you have not read it yet, you can read at http://tinyurl.com/dd399q.

Normally the way I get to know these featured articles have been published, is through an email from our PR agency. But this time around they were beaten by twitter. I regularly monitor the twitter channel on certain keywords and one of them happen to be "COBOL". Over the easter weekend there was such a flurry of activity about the article, it was the first time I have seen so much activity around COBOL on twitter! Check it out for yourself at: http://tinyurl.com/djdmoa.

There was a lot of positive tweets (for those unfamiliar with the twitter world, a tweet is a single micro-blog post on twitter, not longer than 140 characters). But, not quite unexpectedly, there were many who were surprised and event in despair that COBOL continues to thrive. I was able to have some interesting conversations with many of them.

What surprised most people was how much COBOL was still around, and just that fact that COBOL was used. Period.

If you are not following Micro Focus on twitter yet, you can follow us at: @microfocus. And lets hear it for COBOL!

Reusing Proven Business Logic

2009-04-07T12:37:00.000-07:00

Successful businesses can quickly address new opportunities and challenges. This requires that the applications that automate and control these processes can themselves be efficiently realigned. However, as applications age, they tend to grow more complex and less well understood. As a result, the core business logic of these systems becomes progressively more difficult to locate and adjust.

Over time, rules become progressively more obscured within the application code. This increases the time required for developers to analyze their systems before they can modify any given process.

This also means that business rules cannot be rapidly modified to suit changing circumstances. Business users are forced to wait for IT resources to become available before changes can be made. Further, as business process changes become more frequent, IT resources will be increasingly devoted to modifying the buried rules and not focused on higher value activities.

Intellectual Property Must Be Leveraged

Regardless of the complexity, your applications represent a valuable asset for the organization. The business processes programmed into the applications have been adapted and refined over the course of many years. As a result, they represent competitive differentiators that have proven themselves in the real world.

Extending the value of these processes can be a highly beneficial initiative. For instance, an organization may wish to connect a process for opening an account to the Internet. Or perhaps to comply with government regulations it is necessary to demonstrate that your organization has modified certain business processes. Uncovering the relevant logic, documenting it, and making it accessible for auditing can simplify this compliance.

As organizations seek to increase their agility, they are turning to incremental modernization activities. This many involve adapting an application, moving toward SOA, or incrementally upgrading a business process. Each of these activities requires the harnessing of existing business logic.

In two sessions at Micro Focus Live, you can learn how to find and reuse the business logic embedded within your existing application portfolio. These practical sessions provide a step-by-step view of how to harness the logic embedded within these valuable systems.

Stuff We Think About So You Don't Have To

2009-04-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

At Micro Focus we are putting some of our best minds on how to make cloud computing simple and effective.

Here are some thoughts on the sort of things we think about so our customers don't have to. However, some of this stuff is very interesting (if you like computer technology and think that way) so I figured I'd have a go at sharing.

With the advent of multi-core computing it was thought that simple multi-threading was the future for improving performance. For many business applications this has proven not to be the best way forward. What is more, we can learn from alternative approaches when considering moving business applications to the cloud.

Multi-threading is a very simple concept. If there are 4 cores (or CPUs, it makes no difference) performing a task, the idea is that each one of the four does a quarter of the work. If they all work at the same time, then the task will take one quarter of the time it would have if there was only one core.

This view of the world is just great if the task can be split simply into four pieces (or however many pieces as there are cores). The snag is that business applications generally process data. They do things like track parcels, manage money or handle bookings. When handling data across multiple cores, there will come a time when two or more cores need to read and write to the same piece of data at the same time.

A perfect example of this is a bank account. If a business application is working out deductions and additions to a back account, then the order in which they are performed makes a huge difference to the end result. If a wage is paid in after a mortgage payment is taken out, then a large overdraft charge could be triggered. In this situation it is clearly important that different cores communicate with each other as to what they are doing and when. This is a mechanism is called synchronization.

On the face of it, synchronization looks like it should be very fast and very simple. It is easy to think of a multi-core computer being set up internally a bit like the picture below.

Each core sees the computer's memory (the chip based random access memory - not disk) directly. This means that if one core makes a change all the other cores immediately see that change. In effect, the cores communicate with each other by changing the data in the main memory. To synchronize, all the cores need to do is check at what point in a work-flow each one is at and maybe only allow one at a time to write to particular bits of memory. In the bank example, we could make it so that only one core can actually write to the bank account data at once and the order in which writes are made has to be strict date order of the bank transactions.

In this simple model, we will see that most of the processing will happen in parallel (4 cores means four things are happening at once) but some will happen serially - only one core working at once. Whilst this is not quite as fast as cores working all the time, it is not bad either.

Reality gets in the way

However, the real situation is nothing like as simple or easy to work with as that! The problem is that central memory is generally insanely slow compared to modern processors. It is hard to get one's head around just how slow it is. In a modern PC one of the cores can think at least ten times faster than the main memory can supply data to it. When a machine as 2,4,8 or more cores, the problem becomes immense. If we really used the simple memory model above, modern computers would spend the vast majority of their time waiting for main memory and achieving nothing at all.

Luckily there is a concept which can come to the rescue. "Locality of access" is a simple observation, a core tends to do a load of processing on one area of memory and then move onto another area. This means that caching can happen. The bit of memory the core is working on can be downloaded into a very high speed cache memory. Indeed, one can have different levels of cache, each smaller in size but faster than the last. This means that most of the time the core will be working on a super high speed copy of the memory it is interested in. At some point the hardware of the computer will work out that it has to move that copy back into main memory and maybe load the cache up with a copy of a different bit of main memory.

When all this is put in place we get a memory plan which looks a little bit like the picture below:

Whilst this is great where each thread is 'doing its own thing' it causes great problems when threads start sharing data. To share data they have to upload what is in their caches into main memory and load back the shared version (there are some cleaver hardware tricks to improve on this - but the principle remains).

It gets worse before it gets better

This cache issue, in its self, is not too bad; the real problem comes when one considers the programs which might share data. IE they don't know if they are sharing data or not. Even if a thread has a piece of memory all to its self, it still needs to 'lock' that piece of memory in case another thread uses it. This synchronization is very expensive as it requires interaction with main memory even if no data is actually being shared.

One solution to this is to rethink the way threads communicate to each other. The idea is to make each thread only ever use 'its own memory'. One way of doing this is to make each thread an actual process (on Windows or Unix). Google's Chrome browser takes this approach, where each page is managed in its own memory as an individual process. This removes the need for many of the synchronizations that are required in traditional multi-threaded programs.

You might have realised that the above approach does not match the above picture and it does not work. The problem is that I have gotten rid of synchronization but not gotten rid of shared data. There will still be some data which must be shared in a controlled way (like the back account). The way around this is to pass messaged between the threads. They share small specific bits of memory which contain data which they 'send' to one another. No two threads even read and write the same memory at the same time. This might seem clunky, but it gets rid all but the absolutely necessary synchronization and so generally works out a better approach, especially when there is a very large number of cores.

We see a general architecture emerge

So, message passing is the (or one of the) most effective ways of making business applications work well on multi-core machines. The rather wonderful thing about it is that only interconnections between memory areas are the messages. These do not have to be in shared memory. It is just a legitimate to pass messaged over some form of network. The architecture we arrive at has separate threads which are completely isolated form one another and which pass messages via a message bus:

That message bus can be shared memory or it can be the high speed network of a Cloud data centre. Yes - this approach means that programs will run will on multi-core machines and in the cloud.

Voting on sessions for MFL09 closes tomorrow! #MFL09

2009-04-02T05:22:00.000-07:00

If you have not voted on the Micro Focus Live sessions yet, you dont have very long left! The voting will be closed tomorrow and counted to determine what sessions make it and what will have to wait.

We have already recieved hundreds of votes. My sincere thanks to everybody that has taken the initiative and shown support. Dont lose heart, 24 hours is still plenty of time for you to make sure you have had your say too!

Like anything else, the voting is just as simple. Simply goto http://vote.microfocuslive.com and start voting on your favourite sessions.

And while you are there, dont forget to sign up! That is the only way we can keep you updated on what is going on, and this is not an event you want to miss!

See you on the 11th May, on your desktop!

Check out the Micro Focus Live web-widget!

2009-04-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

We thought, if you are as excited about Micro Focus Live as we are at Micro Focus, you would probably want to share it, and shout about it too! If you are going to do it, why not do it in style?!

We have created a cool web-widget that you can use to share your excitement with your friend and peers. Check it out:

Now, using this is quite simple. Just click on the "embed code" link at the bottom left, copy all of the code and paste it into your web page or blog, or anywhere else you would like for it to appear. Yes, it is as simple as that! Technology never fails to amaze us, and we intend to keep it that way :-)

See you on 11th May, on your desktop!

Learning Old Stuff All The Time

2009-03-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

One thing I really love about working in Micro Focus is that innovation does not need to be revolution.

Musings on the sort of innovation you'll be learning
about at MF World.

Many years ago I was sat in a computer lab' at Daresbury Laboratory listening, young and innocent, to a brilliant scientist and one of my mentors at the time. Paul's response to my remark that re-writing some piece of code seemed easier than extending the existing code-base has stuck with me ever since. "It will always seem easier to re-write something than to figure out how it works" (or words to that effect - it was a while ago).

Here at Micro Focus we are doing some very exciting stuff with our technology. But we are doing the hard thing; this is innovation without revolution. Take cloud computing, where we implement standard COBOL technologies and mainframe emulation - then just put it in the cloud. Nothing thrown away, everything gained.

Perhaps at this point I should introduce myself. I am Alex Turner - a senior principal software systems developer at Micro Focus. What does that mean? I means I write a lot of code and get very excited about technologies that work well! I even have a personal blog called 'nerds-central'; maybe that says it all?

On the themes of innovation without revolution and cool stuff, I have recently been playing with COBOL.net. This stuff seems amazingly powerful to me because it does all the things native COBOL does (within reason) plus all the things that any other .net language (C# or VB) can do. Yes - really. But I don't like to take people's word for this sort of thing, I so have pushed further.
"Can we do something a bit off the beaten track? How about accessing MySQL on Windows from COBOL using ADO.net" (my brain talking). Now that is the kind of innovation that I like, take a bunch of things then work well and get some synergy from making them cooperate.

Talking To MySQL From COBOL Over ADO.net

The short answer to my mental questions is 'yes'; you definitely can connect COBOL to MySQL on Windows using ADO.net. What is more, it is very easy, and very fast. If you want a longer answer (with bits of code and stuff) then read on.

The first thing to do is install the MySQL ADO.net connector (here) and then fire up Visual Studio with COBOL (I used COBOL for Visual Studio which came with Net Express 5.1). Now add the MySQL connector as a reference to your project.

Now you will need to create a MySQL DbConnection. To keep the code neat, I suggest adding this to the repository paragraph of configuration section:


repository.
 class cls-mysql-connection
 as "MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection"

Now openning the connection is dead simple, you construct it
and call Open:


set sqlConnection to cls-mysql-connection::"New"()
move
 "database=cobol_test;
server=localhost;user id=root; pwd=passWordHere;"
   to sqlConnection::"ConnectionString"
 invoke sqlConnection::"Open"()

You might want to put the open in a try block something like
this:


try
  invoke sqlConnection::"Open"()
    ex
      invoke self::"WriteLine"(ex)
      raise ex
end-try.

Finally, here is a lump of code which will read a record set from a query:


set command to dbh::"CreateCommand"()
move "SELECT * FROM junk" to command::"CommandText"
set reader to command::"ExecuteReader"()
set hasMore to reader::"Read"()
perform until hasMore = false
  set hasMore to reader::"Read"()
  invoke type "Console"::"WriteLine"("Key={0}, Value='{1}'"
     reader::"Item"(0) reader::"Item"(1))
end-perform

Where ex, and hasMore are defined as:


01 hasMore condition-value.
01 ex type "Exception".

Conclusions

I really wanted to make this a brief 'taster'. The code examples are just enough to show the possibilities available by coupling COBOL with the .net framework. What I find really exciting is
that this new code can happily co-exist in the same program with more traditional procedural COBOL. As COBOL is a naturally data centric language, the potential of this and more sophisticate approaches seem endless.

Application Understanding Boosts the Agility of your Business Operations

2009-03-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

Application portfolios automate the operations of every organization. In fact, business processes have become indistinguishable from the applications that execute them. So it is essential that your applications align with the business strategies and goals of the organization.

But for most large organizations this kind of flexibility can be more challenging. Applications have grown so technically complex that they cannot be adapted without significant cost and risk. To address this challenge requires business intelligence about your application portfolio.

For application development teams – including ISVs – understanding the structure and function of your applications can be a compelling competitive differentiator. For ISVs in particular it provides detailed technical documentation of your existing applications, information that your end-clients would consider invaluable for ongoing maintenance.

It is also extremely valuable for customers that have installed and modified your packages. By understanding their ‘bespoke’ applications, they are better prepared for upgrades or for integrating additional portions of your solution.

To provide this insight into your applications, Micro Focus offers the Modernization Workbench. The Modernization Workbench creates a centralized, always-current warehouse of business intelligence about the applications that run your business. These insights allow your team to identify and execute development activities more efficiently and with significantly less risk.
The Modernization Workbench collects and combines:

Technical Insights: Unlike niche tools that provide simple scans of your enterprise applications, the Modernization Workbench offers a comprehensive approach. It generates detailed structural models of existing applications across diverse environments – from COBOL, PL/I, and Natural to PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, and Java. The platform richly parses source code, tracing complex relationships between programming entities.

Business Insights: The platform allows users to understand their applications from a business perspective. Users can place multiple overlapping business descriptions onto artifacts, transactions, and other entities. For instance, users can ‘tag’ artifacts by the business process they execute or the geography that manages them. This allows users to analyze and manage their application portfolio in a business-centric way. Further, the Modernization Workbench offers patented business rule mining capabilities. This function allows analysts to locate, document, and organize the business logic embedded within their systems. Users can quickly relearn how their applications behave in support of core processes.

External Sources of Intelligence: Intelligence from other sources can be important for executing development tasks. For instance, managers want to know where to focus programmers. Data about cost, opinions about application value, and bug counts can be imported into the platform. This provides rich intelligence that can help guide portfolio governance decisions.

The rich business intelligence is consolidated within an extensible, enterprise-class knowledgebase. Globally distributed users have access to the same source of information. This ensures that knowledge about core applications can be efficiently transferred between international teams, improving collaboration. In fact, the platform has proven its value at massive worldwide deployments.

Now that deep insight into your applications has been collected, how can it be used? There are numerous ways:

Understand the Application Portfolio: Rising complexity and a loss of knowledge about your application portfolio means that few CIOs know their “current state”. By understanding the reality of your applications, you can better plan and execute development activities, and transition knowledge between global teams. Customer-led ROI studies have shown that the Modernization Workbench generates business intelligence 70% faster than manual approaches.

Application Portfolio Management: The Modernization Workbench’s data feeds give users detailed insight into where misalignments exist between the business priorities and the software that runs their businesses. Managers can track and trend this data to govern which applications should be priorities for modernization activities and which should be returned to maintenance.

Application Modernization: Regardless of which of the many paths to modernization that an organization takes, the Modernization Workbench speeds the initiative. For instance, the platform can isolate proven business logic into standalone components that can be independently called as services. You can also use the technology to renovate and re-architect your applications to radically reduce complexity and boost maintainability. You can also deploy other Micro Focus technologies to dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of your applications.

Efficient Application Maintenance: The Modernization Workbench accelerates maintenance through rich analysis and documentation capabilities that improve the efficiency and responsiveness of maintenance teams. In fact, customer-led ROI studies have shown that large change requests are completed in as much as 50% less time than with alternative approaches.

In Micro Focus Live, you’ll have access to numerous ‘real world’ sessions that demonstrate how you can use this technology to understand and better manage your application portfolio.

Governing Applications to Minimize Risk

2009-03-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

Your business operations are built on sophisticated application portfolios. These applications are ‘mission critical’ and cannot be allowed to fail. As a result, it is imperative that these systems conform to your standards for quality, stability, and efficiency. Neglecting to govern your development activities can expose your organization to unacceptable risks for business outages or similar disruptions.

At the same time, there are other external pressures on your application portfolio. Government regulations have become increasingly demanding. They compel you to adapt your business processes and prove that your systems adhere to requirements for privacy, security, and general behaviors. In this case, neglecting to govern your development activities can lead to significant legal exposure.

This means that it is important to govern your application portfolio throughout its lifecycle – from building applications through their modernization. Let’s look at several examples of how effective governance can help you to address business risks:

Building Applications: As you maintain existing applications, or add new applications to the portfolio, it is important that they are well developed to avoid rework and outages. Effective governance involves analyzing your applications to determine how changes will impact the rest of the application portfolio. Further, by providing advanced development tooling, professionals can be more productive and greatly reduce the introduction of errors.
Testing Applications: Analyzing applications to determine where to test can help to drive risks out of an application. But there are other aspects of risk that should be addressed during testing. For privacy concerns, it is imperative that customer data is never improperly exposed. Yet, for proper testing, you may require ‘live’ data. By obfuscating customer data you can address both issues and minimize risk.
Managing Applications: Your organization will have different tolerances for different kinds of risks. As a result, it is important to define your key risk metrics and apply them to your application portfolio. By measuring your applications in business terms, you can spot misalignments and risk points and address them proactively through IT activities. This is especially powerful when executed within a recognized application management framework, like ITIL.
Auditing Business Processes: For many kinds of regulatory compliance, it is necessary for IT to prove that their business processes conform to government mandates. But when business logic is buried deep within application code, how can you prove that you are compliant? Effective governance would respond by providing auditors with visibility into the business rules and processes embedded in their applications.
Multiplying Expertise: Your applications are often very complex. This can lead to an overreliance on a small number of subject matter experts. This can be a substantial risk, as these experts can be inaccessible due to time constraints or movement to another role. By transferring knowledge about your applications between team members, a significant business risk can be removed. Also, through emulation technologies, you give authorized team members well-controlled access to proven business processes – further eliminating a troublesome bottleneck.
Modernizing Applications: As you look to boost the efficiency and flexibility of your core applications, you will discover the advantages of modernizing existing systems. It is important to select modernization alternatives that return value quickly and cause virtually no disruption to your established business processes.

At Micro Focus Live, you’ll learn more about how effective governance of your application portfolio can boost business continuity and minimize risk.

Aligning Your Application Portfolio with Business Goals

2009-03-26T06:31:00.000-07:00

Your application portfolio is a strategic business asset. After all, it automates and controls critical business processes on a daily basis. In fact, for many companies, their primary client interfaces are driven by sophisticated applications. We see this in the banking industry where customers conduct most of their banking via Internet banking and ATMs.

As a result, it is imperative that these applications are well-aligned with the core goals of the business. For a bank, it might be to ensure that the ATM systems are always available. For a manufacturer, it may be to ensure that its order fulfillment systems can be adapted quickly to add new products. And for an insurer it might be that the applications must be transparent so that auditors can validate compliance with government regulations.

Regardless of the goal, it is important that IT managers understand the overarching business goals of their applications. By tracking adherence to these goals, they can spot where resources need to be reallocated. For instance, if we see uptime falling for a key application, this may require urgent attention.

Further, by matching IT initiatives to business goals, managers can have more productive negotiations with line of business users. After all, most IT teams have more than a 1-year backlog of activities. They need to make sure that they are working on the right activities.
So how should we proceed? A three stage process will help:

Understand your metrics: IT may have its own metrics that it uses to track success like architectural quality of applications, or time to develop an application, or number of bugs in a given application. While these can be important measures, they are unlikely to have use for discussions with business users. Business people will be more concerned with topics like ‘availability of the customer management system’ or ‘flexibility of the order management system’. Discovering which metrics matter is imperative.
Applying the right context: Your application portfolio should not only be viewed as a technical entity, it should also be seen as a business asset. This means looking at the application portfolio through different prisms. For instance, which portions supports which business processes? Or, which portions are managed by which of your global development teams? By grouping elements in your application portfolio by business contexts that matter to you, you can ‘roll-up’ metrics into true key performance indicators.

Make a decision: When you can filter measurements into useful metrics, you can better guide decisions about your application portfolio. You can start to identify where your applications are moving away from supporting key corporate goals, and where you should focus your supply of development resources.
Act: Now that you have spotted misalignments, it’s time to act. As you have been collecting measurements about your application portfolio, you’ve been collecting rich insights into the structure and behavior of your applications. This is the information that your development team needs to make decisions that turn into development tasks and hence into better aligned application portfolios. Now, you can monitor these alignment measures on a continuous basis, correcting misalignments before they become business disruptions.

At Micro Focus Live, we’ll investigate how you can measure your application portfolios, and turn them from technical assets into well-aligned business assets.

Interact at Micro Focus Live!

2009-03-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

I hope you are as excited as we are at Micro Focus with the announcement to take our annual user conference online to become Micro Focus Live. But as excited as we all are, many users have expressed the same curiosity to me over the past few days - what is this event going to look like?! What is the interaction going to be?

Not many of us seem to have attended this kind of online event before. Infact, when we made the decision to move online, and looked outside to see who else has done anything similar there were only a handful of examples of a 100% online event! I have to admit this challenge was another driving factor for the MFL team at Micro Focus.

Although we are still finalising some of the finer details of the online event platform and its features, I can tell you this is going to be unlike anything we have brought to you before. I am not going to spill all the beans here, but I can sure drop some clues and keep you posted over the next 7 weeks.

So let's get you started - since you are reading this you must have already discovered the blog. This is a good time to book mark it if you haven't done so already. My colleagues and I will be posting to this blog regularly to keep you updated on all the latest developments.

But then if you are a twitter user, you can follow micro focus at @microfocus. The blog posts automatically feed into the microfocus twitter feed. If you are tweeting about Micro Focus live, dont forget to include the hash tag - #MFL09.

Do you prefer using Linked-in? Why don't you join us at our Linked-in Group: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/894727. Linked-in is our discussion joint, where you can ask questions and participate in discussions as well as stay upto date through the news feeds.

And finally, why not subscribe to our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/microfocuslive. We will be updating this channel constantly with videos providing you with updates on the latest news from Micro Focus.

I have to add that this is only the beginning! There is a lot more to come (wait till we get to the actual live event!), and there is a host of other features planned which will put you in the driving seat to experience MFL.

See you between May 11-13 - where we will be delivering all the on-demand and live content direct to you desktop!

Have you voted yet?!

2009-03-25T23:57:00.000-07:00

No, I am not talking about any local elections that may be looming. This is the Micro Focus Live content elections, the race to identify the most popular sessions we will be delivering on-demand and live during the online conference, so tell us what you really want to hear!

This is all new to us, as I am sure it probably is to you to, but we are stepping outside the box and trying to really deliver content that is 100% relevant and 100% convenient for you to access to get the answers and insight you need. Ohh, and it's also 100% FREE!

Just in case you have missed on all our previous communications, "how do I vote" you may ask? Simple - goto http://vote.microfocuslive.com and start clicking - literally! There are more than 100 sessions to choose from - talk about choice! But then don't be scared, they are all smart tagged and organized by subject. Simply work your way down the tags that sound most interesting to you and vote on the sessions you want to see developed. Let the people speak!

So what are you waiting for, start voting - http://vote.microfocuslive.com.

See you between May 11-13 when the live event begins - all the great content voted by our customers, live discussion and chat, and much, much more - all streamed direct to your desktop!

Micro Focus World is now Micro Focus Live!

2009-03-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Top business experts, customer ROI case studies, access to the core development team

Micro Focus has made the bold decision to move its annual user conference on line – taking all the benefits of Micro Focus World, Dallas, and delivering it direct to your desk top. Micro Focus Live 100% online, 100% convenient, 100% free.

We will still deliver the same great content including insight from key industry experts, customer ROI presentations, and access to Micro Focus developers and solution roadmap strategists. Via a mix of on-demand materials, live Q&A and interactive forums you will be able to find out effective ways for cutting IT costs, improving developer productivity, and driving your modernization and migration initiatives.

And best of all, you get to choose the content. Select from the full list of potential sessions and identify the topics you need to hear. We will then deliver the most popular choices on-demand that you can review when convenient – in the office or on the move – it’s up to you!
Then, May 11-13, we will put the analysts, our executives and developer teams in the firing line. This is a unique opportunity for you and your team members to interact directly with the people behind Micro Focus and get answers to your specific operational issues or to deep-dive our technologies.
So sign-up for Micro Focus Live today and tell us what you need to know!

Broadening our portfolio!

2009-02-05T03:32:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Since my last post we've been very busy here not only building out our preparations for MFW'09, but also getting product releases out the door as well as welcoming new members to the Micro Focus family! Not much of an apology for my lack of posts, but certainly of interest I'm sure.

So the plans are solidifying and we are securing some great speakers not only for the business track but for a lot of the related technical sessions that will drill into the details of how some of the business benefits can be achieved. I won't steal the thunder of any forthcoming agenda updates, just to say look out for this in the near future. It does look like that MFW will deliver on its promise of being the most relevant technology event in 2009...

On to the product side, the last time I spoke I mentioned Enterprise View 5.6.3. Well we are now up and running with the release of the latest big release in the flagship APM product - Enterprise View 5.7. The press is telling the world about it (http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2235358/micro-focus-enhances-cio) but we have also posted the information on our web site - check out www.microfocus.com

I'm convinced that the capabilities Micro Focus can bring to the table and the need for good IT discipline around Application Portfolio Management is more relevant than ever before. As an example, this is the kind of thing we are reading nearly every day - http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2234707/global-recession-hits-hard-4436079

Finally, on to new family members. You will doubtless have read about Micro Focus' acquisition of Relativity technologies in January 2009. You'll be pleased to learn that we have been able to rapidly integrate a lot of the necessary details and will be looking to showcase a number of elements from this new technology stack at MFW and are really excited to show off the points of value and synergy to the combined customer community. If you haven't already seen it, check out Forrester's "Good news for customers" article on the acquisition (again, available from www.microfocus.com).

Catch up with you again soon and remember to check back for the agenda...

Thinking about Windows 7???

2009-02-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to download the latest BETA of Microsoft Windows 7.

After installing it and playing with it for about an hour my initial impressions can be summed up with one occasionally overused interjection.

Wow.

Just plain wow.

Any shortcomings customers found with Vista have been addressed with Windows 7 and then some.

One feature customers will find useful is the problem step recorder or the PSR. The PSR is a great piece of technology that when launched, records the user's step by step interaction with a program. For example, if I am using the browser and a particular Web page is causing the browser to fail, the PSR will record the screen and capture my input. The PSR will then package all the recordings up to be sent to an administrator.

What the administrator gets is a package containing a HTML slide show of my actions complete with an English language description of what I did to cause the failure.

Most customer support issues are usually small in nature and having the PSR send error reports to software vendors will greatly reduce downtime when dealing with a program that is having issues. The PSR allows 3rd party vendors to respond quickly without having to go back and forth on the phone with the end user.

The next feature of Windows 7 that I am excited about is the hibernate feature. This version of the hibernate technology is, quite literally, as instant as Microsoft promised it would be. My laptop never gets shutdown or rebooted. I am an avid user of the hibernate feature in Vista and occasionally, the wake up and hibernate times (given the amount of programs I run simultaneously) are horridly slow. On Windows 7, I hit the hibernate button, and the machine is instantly off. On wake up, the longest I waited was 3 seconds.

Like it or not, Windows 7 is coming and if users didn't beg and plead for Vista in their corporate environment, they will for Windows 7.

At our upcoming Micro Focus World event on May 11-13 2009, we will be holding a dedicated session to demonstrate what our plans are for Windows 7 and how to best move our customer's desktop assets, including Micro Focus RUMBA from 2000/XP/Vista into Windows 7.

At this session, we will be holding a panel discussion with customers who have made and are thinking about making wholesale desktop migrations from older versions of Windows to newer ones.

Come to this session to hear best practices, tips on what to avoid, how to make sure your RUMBA users are migrated properly, and overall strategies for keeping the user community happy and productive while investing in the latest Microsoft technologies.

Micro Focus World for Developers update

2009-01-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since I gave an update on the developer tracks at MFW so here it is (I know you’ve been checking back every day just in case!). In fact, it’s been so long, I owe you a Happy New Year!

So, where are we now? At the time of writing there are only about 100 days to go until the fun starts in Dallas (that may seem like a lot to you – but definitely not for me!) and the final agenda details are being fleshed out. Just about every one of the sessions at the conference have value for developers but the two specific “Application Development” tracks are packed with the key content that you, as a COBOL developer, will need to make your current work more productive and prepare you for the changes just around the corner. Everything will be covered from getting the most out of your development tools (you’ve paid for them so you really ought to want to make sure you’re using them to their full extent), to getting under the covers of the next wave of technology.

We’ve got a great variety of sessions from industry experts, customers and Micro Focus technical staff. There will also be plenty of opportunities to meet with your peers and share experiences and lessons learned. Add to that the technical training courses being offered immediately after the main conference and it’s a week that will definitely reward you for the time and effort in getting to Dallas.

I’m going to be hosting a WebCast on Weds Feb 4^th to discuss some of the headline attractions from the Application Development tracks – please sign up (http://www.microfocus.com/promotion/WWWCMFWG0109/) and attend if you can. If you can’t, there should be a recording available afterwards. As an added incentive (not that it’s needed, I’m sure), there are some very special deals available to anyone attending the webcast.

If you’re reading this blog through your favorite newsreader, it’s worth checking the MFW website which has had a recent refresh - a lot of new content has been posted. Also, keep watching the site for more details including the announcement of the guest key note speaker – I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I know it’s going to be a great session.

Don’t forget, if you’ve got any comments, questions or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to send an email or leave a comment on this site.

Some more Dallas trivia: America’s first automated traffic signal was installed in Dallas in 1927

Happy New Year 2009!

2009-01-12T02:48:00.001-08:00

Welcome back!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year break, although it quickly feels like a distant memory! I think I've lived in England too long when I am not able to refrain from mentioning the weather and the fact that it has been freezing with snow and frost the last couple of weeks. When the warm weather finally came around it had the audacity to bring rain with it, so hopefully Dallas in May will offer warmer climes!

Bringing the mind back to more pressing matters - MFWorld! As promised we are back with plenty of exciting news to talk about following the festive break.

Several of my colleagues will soon be joining in to keep you informed on some of the latest updates on the agenda and the activities surrounding MFW '09 - so stay tuned!

To kick off the new year - here is something I think you may find interesting. Micro Focus has been talking about doing things a little differently this year, and we are standing by this rhetoric! This year, we opened up the ExpressIT '09 t-shirt design contest, to invite design ideas for the free t-shirt that you will receive as a delegate at MFW'09. And since this is something you are going to be wearing on every conceivable occasion, we would like to invite you to vote on your favourite designs!

Doing this is quite simple - we have created a Flickr Group where we have uploaded all the submitted designs. Follow this link to our ExpressIT '09 Flickr Group, to view all the contest entries. To vote, login to flickr with your Yahoo ID and either leave a comment or add the picture to your faves. You may vote on more than one design, and these votes will be taken into account when we make the final decision on the winning entry.

Oh - and by the way, if you have a cool idea for a t-shirt design then you may want to consider entering the contest yourself. It is open to everybody except Micro Focus employees and their immediate family members (sorry guys!), with the deadline for designs now extended to February 15.

So what are you waiting for, don't you want to have a hand in the must-wear fashion item of 2009?!

See you in Dallas!!

Gearing up for the holidays!

2008-12-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

There have been some really intersting posts so far, especially around Cloud (and not forgetting Mark Warrens summary of his experience at Microsoft's recent PDC!).

As we approach the Christmas and the New Year period, I am sure many of you are packing your bags and heading off to the hills for a break or with the family to spend some quality time. I've just got off the phone with my colleague who told me he is headed to Paris - lovely! As for myself, I am heading to India to spend some time with family.

But we have big plans to be back with a BANG in the New Year! There will be loads more exciting things my colleagues and I are looking forward to sharing with you. We have sworn to make MFW'09 different and even more exciting than last time, an oath we are determined to fulfill!

So do join us again in the new year of 2009!

Oh yes, before you go away - are you doing anything exciting this christmas?! I would love to hear, do leave a comment!

On Behalf of Micro Focus, may I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

And here is a little Christmas gem from Micro Focus - my favourite Corporate christmas card this year: Click here to view!

Micro Focus World for Developers

2008-12-12T03:58:00.000-08:00

If you’ve been following this blog (and if not, why not!) then you will have seen that we’re gradually providing more information about the session content at Micro Focus World 09. MFW'09 will have 15 tracks and over 100 separate sessions scheduled so there’s going to be a huge amount on offer for a wide developer audience - as it should be!

The conference theme is based around the concept of “Business 2.0” – how will organizations exploit the new technologies of Web 2.0, the Cloud, SOA, new platforms and new business dynamics while exploiting their considerable investment in powerful systems where they can’t afford to take risks. This is obviously very important and timely given the amount of change going on in the world and potentially paradigm-shifting platform changes gather speed.

Having said all that, Micro Focus isn’t about to forget its core strengths or its core audience. Developers are at the heart of all the changes and opportunities going forward, and their knowledge, skills, productivity and agility in moving across technologies and platforms mark them out as critical assets to any organization.

It also shouldn’t be forgotten just how much business awareness the development teams have – a “COBOL programmer” may seem like a fairly simple way to describe a role, but in reality a large proportion of their work is concerned with understanding how the business works, interactions between systems and people to achieve a result, optimal approaches to solving problems and much, much more. These people are critical corporate assets and need to be supported and nurtured (can you tell I used to be a programmer myself?!)

Anyway, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the developer tracks at the conference. There will be more details published over the next few weeks and months but sessions will cover everything from the COBOL language through best practices to exploiting new platforms and tools. Combined with the main conference sessions, optional training sessions will really enhance developers’ skills and value.

So, although the headlines might be talking about Business 2.0, we are keeping a close watch on developers and continue to push the envelope to provide the best support they need regardless of the business’ technology choices. Whether it’s running “big iron” mainframes, creating funky WPF & .NET applications on Windows or providing rich developer support across all platforms including UNIX and Linux with our newly launched Net Express/Server Express for Eclipse, Micro Focus provides state of the art development environments.

As a developer, what do you want to get out of the conference? What do you want to hear? As a self-confessed ex-developer and now Product Manager for Micro Focus’ Application Development tools, I’m really looking forward to meeting as many techies as possible in Dallas and hearing your feedback – but don’t feel you have to wait until then, please feel free to leave comments here to spark a discussion with your peers. I’m sure you will find some common themes or issues we should discuss.

Just for fun, some Dallas trivia: Did you know that the outlaw Frank James once sold sewing machines in downtown Dallas.

Want to shout about Micro Focus World?

2008-12-12T01:47:00.001-08:00

If you are as excited about Micro Focus World as we are, then we thought you might want to shout about it too!

To help your shout loud, we have created a new web-widget that you can use to post on your blogs, or websites to spread the word about Micro Focus World.

How do you do that?! Quite simple: Here is the widget below. At the bottom of it, click on the "Embed code" link, and copy the code in the window that pops up, and paste it on your webpage or blog - and, hey presto!

Oh yes - dont forget to sign up, the early bird offer is still on. Like Stephen Kelly says - "the most exciting technology event of 2009, it's not one for you to miss!

See you there!

New White Paper from Datamonitor on COBOL

2008-12-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

With the 50^th anniversary of the first release of COBOL next year, there is a huge amount of interest from end-users, independent solution vendors, analysts and the media on the evolution of the language and how it is continuing to play a critical role in supporting core business systems.

Butler Group /Datamonitor has just released a brand new assessment of the strength and value of COBOL-based assets in supporting the majorityof today’s business applications and Micro Focus is delighted to offer you the chance to download this excellent piece of research free of charge for a limited period. To secure your copy, please visit the link shown below:

Download the new Datamonitor White Paper

Business Track update - Application Portfolio Management

2008-12-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to notify readers of a few updates relating to the Business track for Micro Focus World '09.

First, one of the most notable overlaps in terms of Micro Focus' offerings is in the Application Portfolio Management space; we've been quite busy recently getting the latest release of our flagship product - Micro Focus Enterprise View, 5.6.3, out to our customers (see related article). Next, we're already looking forward to a further release early in the new year, and you'll hear more about that in the next issues of our In Focus newsletter (December's release will contain a few pointers prior to the release). If you aren't sure where to pick up In Focus - go here.

On the agenda for the business track itself, we've received some helpful input from some of our clients in terms of content suggestions, but we're always happy to receive more. Why not post your thoughts here? I was asked for my own views the other day - my views on why you should attend MFW'09. This was recorded in glorious technicolor! I think the conference team are planning to post the video on this site in due course - and apparently the camera never lies... but do take a look and let us know if you have any views you'd like to share.

Finally, we're ensuring we carefully consider the investments people have to make to join us in Dallas. So not only do we have the early bird discounts, but we are looking to add in optional technical training sessions for delegates who want to maximize the value of their trip. You'll be hearing more about that in due course too.

As ever, feel free to post any thoughts you have as we look to ensure the entire community has their say in MFW.

ACU / Liant update webcast from Drake Coker

2008-12-09T07:47:00.000-08:00

Drake Coker joins us on this webcast to speak about the plans going forward for our Micro Focus extend® product suite. Drake will be covering the following in the webcast:

ACU development strategy explained: ACU and Micro Focus - forward together
COBOL application development and modernization plans shared
Meet the product managers and product solutions team who are driving the ACU family road map
Ask questions of the presenters on the technical and commercial strategy for extend®

If you are interested in the Micro Focus extend® product suite, be sure to join the webcast on 11^th December.

Full joining details and times on the following link:

http://www.microfocus.com/promotion/WWEMEXRM1108/

Video Update: Stephen Kelly on MFW

2008-12-08T03:57:00.000-08:00

The build up to MFW'09 continues! In this video recording hear Stephen Kelly, Micro Focus' CEO, discussing some of the compelling reasons why you can't afford to miss the 'most exciting technology event of 2009'.

I found the part on the agenda really exciting - "There are 7 tracks, with over 100 sessions to choose from...." and let's not forget the exhibition floor and the partners and sponsors, including Microsoft discussing their Azure Cloud platform, who are going to be there.

Let me step aside, and leave you to listen to Stephen directly:

Announcing COBOL Evolution '09 Contest

2008-11-28T07:39:00.001-08:00

Have you had a chance yet to check out the latest announcements around our COBOL programming competition, Evolution '09?

COBOL is proudly celebrating its 50th Anniversary in 2009, and to mark this landmark achievement we have announced the Evolution '09 programming competition which is open to anyone and everyone, as long as you are not a Micro Focus Employee or their immediate family (sorry MF Folks!).

Your mission is quite simply to build a solution/program based on COBOL. The panel of judges will be looking to identify three seperate winners based on the following criteria:

- Most innovative solution

- Best business opportunity

- Best academic solution

Each winner will receive a free, all expenses paid trip to the MFW ’09 conference in Dallas, Texas next year!

So what are you waiting for, get your thinking caps on and start creating.

For more details, and to register as a competitor, visit our website at: www.microfocusworld.com/interact/COBOLEvolution.asp.

COBOL & Standards - a good thing?

2008-11-19T02:38:00.000-08:00

Micro Focus has always been a staunch advocate of the COBOL standards process. I remember (long, long ago) working to get ANSI 85 certification (an interesting challenge as the standard, the compiler and the certification suites all seemed to be getting created simultaneously!) Micro Focus’ support for the standards process is still true today and you may have seen our recent announcement (click here to read the announcement) coinciding with the working group meeting in California.

I think the standards process has, overall, been a pretty good thing for COBOL - there is a good core standard and it has evolved over a long period of time to encompass every new technology as it came along - structured programming, object orientation, XML, web architectures, and now we’re moving towards the Cloud ... who knows what’s next? While all these innovations where being made, the core capabilities for high performance, high capacity, mission critical systems has never been lost. A pretty remarkable achievement.

By contrast, supposedly "standard" languages such as Java are starting to flounder somewhat. There have been some moves toward standardization to open up the language but significant enhancements have really dried up recently and I've never quite found the "write once run anywhere" nearly as real as what has been done with COBOL. Every week seems to generate a new “Java-like-but-better” language that come and go so quickly you can’t keep up.

Taking another route, which might be described as a "benevolent dictatorship", is C#. Don't get me wrong, here - Microsoft are doing some fantastic things with the language and framework. But would it progress faster and on more platforms if there was a widely supported standard and competing compiler/platform vendors?

So, I think standards have mostly strengthened COBOL. Or am I wrong? Perhaps you, as real users of the language don't care or aren’t happy with the way standards evolve? Is the important thing, really, that Micro Focus offers outstanding mainframe compatibility rather than simply adherence to the standards?

There will be discussion of the COBOL standard as it stands, its future and the process at Micro Focus World, but if you have any comments, please add them here and let’s get the discussion started now.

Perhaps you could also start nominating what features you think Micro Focus and the standards groups should be considering in the next release of the language?

The Cloud, Azure and deploying applications

2008-11-04T07:29:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently come back from the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) in LA where they announced their Cloud platform – Azure. Micro Focus were there demonstrating for the first time how to take an existing COBOL application and deploy it out to the Azure platform without changing a line of code (see the announcement at microfocus.com). Obviously these are still very early days, but as a proof of concept, it’s an amazing achievement (I know, I may be a little biased!)

The Cloud can mean a lot of different things. There’s quite a bit of difference between the Amazon model and Azure and it’s possible there will be space for both (and more?) in the future. I found Dare Obasanjo’s post a very good summary of the basic architectures and a developer’s view of Azure.

It was interesting to hear Microsoft talking about the kinds of issues that traditional data centers have had to deal with for a long time – security, upgrades, reliability, deployment architectures, etc. But they’re also starting to think about some of the more tricky topics I’ve not seen discussed very much so far, such as coping with data protection laws where geo-location of data could be an issue when that data is being stored in some unknown machine room outside the enterprise’s physical buildings.

Obviously, MF World is going to be covering a lot of issues around creating new applications and moving existing ones onto Cloud platforms but what do you think are the “elephants in the room” when considering Cloud deployments? What solutions could there be? What support would you need in development and operational environments? This is something we’re actively considering at the moment and your input would be valued.

By the way, I should introduce myself – I’m the Product Management Director for Application Development solutions here at Micro Focus and recently rejoined the company after a spell away (I first started a long, long time ago!). In that role, I’m working on identifying what is needed for COBOL application development and deployment products over the next few years.

Hello COBOL Developers...

2008-09-30T11:12:00.001-07:00

Allow me to add my welcome to the Micro Focus World Blog space. In the next few months as we prepare for Micro Focus World, I will be writting regularly to this blog space for users of Micro Focus COBOL products such as Net Express, Net Express with .NET and Server Express. My name is John Billman and I’m a Product Manager based in the Micro Focus Newbury, UK offices.

Where to start? Well, the context of this blog is Micro Focus World in Dallas, TX from May 11-13 2009. This is a discussion forum to explore the problems, solutions and information that will make this a truly compelling and valuable event. Through this process I’ll be soliciting ideas, feedback and comments in this space on the sessions that would be of most value to this group.

The starting point of course for usage of Net Express and Server Express is an investment in COBOL. This COBOL code often forms the heart of the business logic and data processing in an application or solution; it is fast, scalable, reliable and maintainable. At the same time COBOL IDEs and most importantly applications written in COBOL have continued to evolve alongside the world around them.

However, something I’d like us explore together in this blog and hopefully at Micro Focus World is the next step in the evolution or modernization of these critical COBOL applications. In other words, what are the priorities in extending these assets? What are the problems we are trying to solve? How does the changing business and technical landscape affect these applications? SOA, Web 2.0, .NET and the cloud all potentially have a role to play in the Future of COBOL applications – but what is the route to embrace these technologies?

So let’s start the blogging process, all comments are welcome.

A few words on Application Modernization

2008-09-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the blog space for Micro Focus World. During the next few months, I will be using this space to discuss the latest developments related to Application Modernization.

My name is Andy Sinclair, I’m a Senior Product Director in the Micro Focus Product Management team, responsible for the products that support our Application Modernization solution.

This solution area focuses on helping organizations that are running mission critical applications on mainframe or proprietary mid range systems, exploit and reuse these assets to deliver more value to the business. This is very topical as more and more organizations tighten purse strings in today’s increasingly volatile economic climate.

Over the coming weeks and months I will be reaching out to our existing and prospective customers interested in understanding how mainframe development teams can help their organizations respond to the new opportunities and challenges that face every business or government body today – that’s what we mean by the overall conference theme of Business 2.0!

Within the Application Modernization track we will look at how to modernize applications on the mainframe more efficiently and explore why more and more organizations are deriving business benefit from running discrete mainframe workload on alternative Linux, UNIX, Windows servers or zLinux partitions. We will also look at how existing mainframe applications can and should exploit Web 2.0 to support the conference sub themes of “On the Web” and “On the Move” and last, but not least, we will explore how Cloud computing is evolving and whether existing mainframe applications can be run “In the Cloud” to deliver business advantage.

We hope you will find these themes not just relevant but exciting. With this in mind, I will be soliciting your thoughts, ideas and feedback on our plans and themes for the conference to ensure that every attendee of Micro Focus World leaves armed with the information they feel can help instigate change that helps “move the dial” in a positive direction.

Hence, this blog space. It’s been set up to enable interaction, not just with myself but with other Micro Focus customers who really care about what topics should be covered to deliver the greatest possible value. Any ideas are welcome until we freeze the agenda, so let’s get blogging.

Cloud computing article

2008-09-26T04:37:00.000-07:00

The link below leads to a recent article that appeared in Computing magazine in the UK, discussing business attitudes to cloud computing. With this topic firmly on the agenda for next year’s Micro Focus World, it is interesting to read about the mixed enthusiasm and scepticism about cloud computing out there in the marketplace. One thing is for sure – cloud computing will stay on the media agenda and there are going to be some winning companies out there who are able to harness the power of this evolving technology to gain advantage over of their competitors.

In the article, a CIO at a leading financial institution says, “the appeal of cloud computing is simple and compelling. There are certain things that need to be done to deliver day-to-day parts of the information security armoury that are best done in the cloud. It is more cost-effective for the business and higher in security quality terms,”

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/features/2225644/keys-entering-cloud-4204099

Enjoy!

First Words

2008-09-26T03:19:00.000-07:00

This is a quick note to introduce myself to you and welcome you to the blog space for the APM track of Micro Focus World 2009.

My name is Derek Britton and I work in the Product Management organization at Micro Focus, on the Enterprise View product.

In the coming weeks and in the run up to Micro Focus World 2009, you’ll be hearing more from me and the conference team as we share with you our thoughts, ideas and your feedback on the plans for the conference. I’m going to help run the Portfolio Management track so any thoughts in that space are welcome.

First things first – you will be receiving invitations by email in the coming weeks, so be sure to register early and get yourself the early-bird discount we will have on offer. The date to mark in your calendars is 11-13 May, 2009, and the location is Dallas, TX.

Next we’ll also be planning plenty of activities for the conference, but we want to build it around YOU. So the point of the blog space, the closer interaction, and the extra planning time, is to allow you the opportunity to shape the agenda the way you want to see it. Any ideas are welcome, so I look forward to your comments! I’ll be writing to everyone in the near future with some outline thoughts, but all input is welcome, and the earlier the better!

I hope this blog will prove to be useful to you; I’m excited to be bringing you updates in this way as I hope it will be interactive, informative and hopefully easy to use!