Micro Focus Upgrades SOA Express to Support Direct Mainframe CICS Deployment

Micro Focus(R) (LSE.MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application management and modernization solutions, today announced the availability of SOA Express 8.0. The new version adds support for direct deployment into IBM’s Customer Information Control System (CICS),

enabling users to accelerate the deployment of Web services by reusing their existing CICS TS mainframe infrastructure in a simplified and even faster 2-Tier model. This additional support provides customers with more options for their service oriented architecture (SOA) deployment environment. In addition to CICS, SOA Express supports SOA deployments over .Net and J2EE application servers. As a result, organizations are able to quickly and more easily migrate existing, core applications to an SOA as Web services regardless of platform or technology base.

SOA provides a strategic route to web enablement, integration and modernization of existing applications, providing a significantly more rapid delivery of new business initiatives than rewrite alternatives. Micro Focus SOA Express enables the reuse and modernization of existing mainframe applications without code changes by unlocking the business logic embedded within these applications and delivering them to an SOA. Standards based Web services can then be utilized by teams across the organization rendering proven COBOL business logic accessible to Java, .NET and Web teams for extension across the enterprise.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina is using SOA Express to replace their existing Web and desktop enablement solution. “The ability to provide our customers and the customer service staff with rapid and accurate access to information is core to our business. SOA Express has enabled us to deliver Web and desktop access with dramatically improved performance on our platform of choice,” said Keith Wild, Director of Internal Resource Management at BC/BSSC.