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.

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!

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.