Micro Focus and IBM Form Alliance to Deliver PL/I Compiler and MVS
Emulation under OS/2

Palo Alto, Calif.; Somers, N.Y. May 11, 1993 -- Micro Focus and IBM
Programming Systems today jointly announced that they have expanded their
long-term relationship in MVS emulation products by agreeing on a strategy
for delivering MVS PL/I emulation under OS/2 and today announced Micro
Focus PL/I for ADMVS produced by IBM Programming Systems and Micro Focus.
Micro Focus has licensed the PL/I compiler and debugging technology from
IBM Programming Systems and will market it with a PL/I version of the
Micro Focus ADMVS product, an MVS emulation development environment. PL/I
for ADMVS is planned to be available September 1993.

"PL/I programmers worldwide will benefit from the state-of the-art
development platforms that Micro Focus offers," said Earl Wheeler, senior
vice president and general manager, IBM Programming Systems. "Our joint
solution will help programmers improve the quality of their applications
and increase their productivity in maintaining the applications. It will
also offer the opportunity to migrate host PL/I applications onto
distributed systems."

Micro Focus has worked closely with IBM Santa Teresa Laboratory, San Jose,
Calif., to develop a highly integrated MVS PL/I application development
environment for OS/2. The joint development efforts produced the PL/I for
ADMVS product, which will support the Micro Focus IMS, CICS and DB2
options. These products will be sold by Micro Focus with marketing
assistance and support from IBM Programming Systems' Santa Teresa
Laboratory, the originator of the PL/I compiler technology. Micro Focus
and IBM will work together to continue to evolve the PL/I product line.

"This is an exciting new marketplace for Micro Focus and we welcome all
PL/I programmers to the world of workstation-based application
development," said John Beggs, president of worldwide sales at Micro
Focus. "This relationship will allow both companies to deliver the highest
quality products to our new PL/I customers, at the same time providing to
them the Micro Focus technology and expertise that our COBOL customers
enjoy today. IBM's knowledge and expertise in MVS PL/I will allow us to
provide the optimum cross platform development environment on OS/2 for
PL/I programmers."

PL/I for ADMVS has the look and feel of TSO/ISPF and provides an integrated
development environment for MVS PL/I application development under OS/2.
PL/I application developers can browse, edit, allocate files and datasets,
compile and interactively test programs, run jobstreams using MVS JCL, and
execute utilities. The menu panels allow all of the functions performed on
a daily basis under MVS to be done under OS/2.

Together with the Micro Focus IMS, CICS and DB2 options, the product
faithfully emulates MVS, including support for EBCDIC format, 370
integers, ISPF editing, ISPF PDF, JCL and ISPF Dialog Manager, all under
OS/2. There are unique features that invoke appropriate preprocessors when
compiling IMS, CICS and DB2 PL/I programs. IMS and CICS testing and
management facilities for OS/2 can be accessed directly from ADMVS panels.
The mainframe programmer can become productive working under OS/2 in a
very short time.

The PL/I for ADMVS compiler is compatible with IBM MVS PL/I and also
includes a significant number of new functions, new compiler options,
diagnostic facilities and subroutines which can increase productivity by
simplifying many common programming tasks. Program interrupts or exception
conditions that occur at run time can be detected by the hardware, the
operating system or other software, or PL/I for ADMVS itself. Using these
facilities you can handle these exceptions to write applications that
provide non-stop operation. There will be an upgrade offering to PL/I for
ADMVS for users of IBM PL/I Package/2 Version 1. For further details about
acquiring PL/I for ADMVS, contact Micro Focus at (800) 468-9080.

With more than $2.7 billion in revenue, IBM's Programming Systems business
unit based in Somers, N.Y. is one of the largest software providers in the
computing industry. International Business Machines Corporation,
Programming Systems, Santa Teresa Laboratory is located at 555 Bailey
Avenue, San Jose, California 95141, Tel. (408) 463-4591.

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