 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Information technology |
| Founded | 1976; 49 years ago (1976) |
| Founder | Brian Reynolds |
| Successor | OpenText |
| Headquarters | Newbury, England |
Key people | |
| Products | Enterprise applicationintegration and managementsoftware |
| Services | IT consulting |
| Revenue |  US$2,899.9 million (2021)[1] |
 US$(265.6) million (2021)[1] | |
| US$(424.4) million (2021)[1] | |
Number of employees | 11,000 (2022)[2] |
| Parent | OpenText |
| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | microfocus |
Micro Focus International plc was a Britishmultinationalsoftware andinformation technology business based inNewbury, Berkshire, England. The firm provided software andconsultancy. The company was listed on theLondon Stock Exchange and theNew York Stock Exchange until it was acquired by the Canadian software firmOpenText in January 2023.
Micro Focus was founded by Brian Reynolds inNotting Hill in 1976.[3][4] In 1981, it became the first company to win theQueen's Award for Industry purely for developing a software product. The product was CIS COBOL, a standard-compliantCOBOL implementation formicrocomputers.[5]
In 1998, the company acquiredIntersolv, Inc., an applications enablement business, forUS$534 million[6] and the combined business was renamed Merant.[3] The same year the company acquired XDB Systems with theirXDB Enterprise Server relational database management system.[7] In 2001 the business was demerged from Merant with help fromGolden Gate Capital Partners and once again became Micro Focus.[8] It was listed on theLondon Stock Exchange in 2005.[9]
In May 2007, San Diego–based Acucorp, Inc., a developer of COBOL development tools and provider of technologies for COBOL applications, was acquired by Micro Focus for its ACUCOBOL-GT product lines.[10][11][12]
In June 2008, the company acquired the IsraeliNASDAQ listed software companyNetManage forUS$73.3 million.[13]
In July 2008, the company acquired the privately held Austin, Texas–based Liant Software Corporation for its RM/COBOL and PL/I product lines. Liant Software owned the assets ofRyan-McFarland Corporation, a Micro Focus competitor in the 1980s.[14]
In July 2009, the company acquiredBorland, a developer of application lifecycle management tools, as well as the Quality Solutions part ofCompuware, including the automation toolTestPartner.[15]
In 2011, the company alleged that theNew South Wales Police Force and other agencies were using 16,500 copies of its ViewNow software on various computers when police and other agencies were only ever entitled to 6,500 licences. The group initially allegedA$10 million in damages but later increased this toA$12 million after reviewing the results of a court-ordered audit of the police force's computer systems. The police force maintained during the court proceedings that it had paid for a site licence that entitled it to unlimited installations of the software for all of its officers. Despite this, it settled the matter out of court in 2012, for an undisclosed sum. The other agencies previously settled the matter out of court, also for undisclosed sums.[16]
In December 2013, Micro Focus acquired the Orbix, Orbacus and Artix software product lines fromProgress Software. These market-leading implementations of theCORBA standard were originally developed byIONA Technologies.[17]
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On 15 September 2014, Micro Focus announced that it would acquireThe Attachmate Group forUS$1.2 billion in shares, which would give it ownership of theAttachmate,NetIQ,Novell, andSUSE product lines. Attachmate's parent company Wizard Parent LLC—consisting of the investment groupsElliott Management Corporation,Francisco Partners,Golden Gate Capital, andThoma Bravo, would hold a 40% stake in Micro Focus post-acquisition.[18][19] With the purchase of Attachmate, Micro Focus became the owner of theUnix operating system.[20]
In 2015, Micro Focus acquired Authasas, which produces authentication middleware.[21]
On 22 March 2016, Micro Focus announced its intent to acquireSerena Software, then valued atUS$540 million.[22] The acquisition was completed on 2 May 2016.[23]
On 7 September 2016, Micro Focus announced its intent to merge withHewlett Packard Enterprise’s software business segment.[24][25] The merger was completed on 1 September 2017.[26]
On 4 October 2016, Micro Focus announced it had acquired Gwava Inc., an enterprise information archiving business.[27]
On 19 March 2018, Micro Focus shares fell 55% to 849p after the company warned of a sharp fall in revenue; its chief executive, Chris Hsu, resigned.[28]
On 2 July 2018, it was announced that Micro Focus would sell itsSUSE business segment toEQT AB for $2.535 billion.[29][30]
In July 2020, Micro Focus acquired Turkish cybersecurity company ATAR Labs for $8 million.[31][32]
In August 2022, Canadian software firmOpenText announced that it would acquire Micro Focus in a deal valued at US$6 billion.[33] The acquisition was approved by the court on 27 January 2023, so allowing the transaction to be completed on 31 January 2023.[34][2]
In November 2023 OpenText announced that it would divest its Application Modernization and Connectivity (AMC) division to Rocket Software.[35] The deal completed on 1 May 2024.[36]AMC includes the COBOL business that formed the original Micro Focus.[37]
Acucorp was founded in 1988 by sister and brother, Pamela Coker, CEO, and Drake Coker, Chief Scientist. Drake wrote a file system, Vision, and a COBOL compiler, ACUCOBOL-85, now called ACUCOBOL-GT.[38][39][40][41] ACUCOBOL-GT offers a comprehensive set of extensions for programming and managing graphical user interfaces (GUIs). With these extensions, an ACUCOBOL-GT developer can add a full-featured GUI entirely in COBOL to an existing program.[42]
Liant Software Corporation was founded in 1983.[43] This company was an outgrowth of the 3-way partnership namedDigitek and a successor named Ryan-McFarland Corporation, which was sold to an Australian company named Austec. They sold it to a company named Language Processors, Inc - later renamed Liant Software Corporation. The latter was acquired by Micro Focus International.[14] Liant was still advertising itsOpenPL/I product in 1995.[44]
Dave McFarland and Don Ryan, both with aDigitek background, co-founded Ryan-McFarland Corporation.[45] Ryan-McFarland was a major source forFORTRAN,COBOL andBASIC in the PC arena.[46][47][48]
Liant Software Corp was founded in 1983.
Don Ryan went on with Dave McFarland, also from Digitek, to found Ryan-McFarland
Two FORTRAN Compilers for Microcomputers: Ryan-McFarland and Microsoft ...
Similarly, for the past 20 years Ryan-McFarland Corp. has offered its customers standard Cobol and Fortran compilers and tools.
Media related toMicro Focus at Wikimedia Commons
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