Micro Focus Innovation in COBOL

Micro Focus was founded in 1976 by two visionaries who understood how instrumental mainframe COBOL had become in running the global economy and how microprocessors could revolutionize IT. They also realized that if these new machines were ever to become a viable alternative to mainframe environments for running business applications, then it would be vital to make COBOL available on these new environments.

Therefore when Micro Focus was established, its initial mission was to create a COBOL compiler to enable the development and deployment of COBOL based business systems on microcomputers. The result was the release of the first COBOL compiler for micro computers in 1976 – Compact Interactive Standard (CIS) COBOL for an ICL Singer 8-bit microprocessor.

Since then, Micro Focus has established itself as the market leading independent COBOL provider by continuously innovating in the COBOL technology market space. We have achieved this through:

• Making COBOL available on the latest 16/32/64-bit microprocessors
• Implementing COBOL on the different operating systems available on these chips
• Evolving the COBOL language to meet industry demands
• Enabling COBOL to integrate with all contemporary technologies
• Ensuring COBOL programmers have a superior Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 

Our passion and commitment to COBOL technology has resulted in numerous ‘industry firsts’ that have been instrumental in ensuring the continuing success of our customers for over three decades.