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Micro Focus International plc is a British multinational
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
and
information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...
business based in
Newbury, Berkshire Newbury is a market town in the county of Berkshire, England, and is home to the administrative headquarters of West Berkshire Council. The town centre around its large market square retains a rare medieval Cloth Hall, an adjoining half timbere ...
, England. The firm provides software and
consultancy A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servic ...
. The company is listed on the
London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
and is a constituent of the
FTSE 250 Index The FTSE 250 Index ( "Footsie") is a capitalisation-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. Promotions and demotions to and from the index occur quarterly in March, June, Septemb ...
.


History

Micro Focus was founded in 1976. In 1981, it became the first company to win the
Queen's Award Queen's Award can refer to: * Queen's Awards for Enterprise, formerly The Queens Awards to Industry * Queen's Award for Voluntary Service, an annual award given to groups in the voluntary sector of the United Kingdom * Queen's Award for Forestry T ...
for Industry purely for developing a software product. The product was CIS COBOL, a standard-compliant
COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...
implementation for
microcomputers A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...
. In 1998, the company acquired Intersolv Inc, an applications enablement business, for and the combined business was renamed Merant. The same year the company acquired XDB Systems with their
XDB Enterprise Server XDB Enterprise Server is a relational database management system (DBMS), which was available for DOS, Windows NT and OS/2, and was compatible with IBM's DB2 database. DOS version was released in 1988 as one of the earliest DOS-based SQL database ...
relational database management system. In 2001 the business was demerged from Merant with help from
Golden Gate Capital Partners Golden Gate Capital is an American private equity firm based in San Francisco. The firm makes investments in a number of select industries, including technology, financial services, retail and industrial, through leveraged buyout transactions, as ...
and once again became Micro Focus. It was listed on the
London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
in 2005. 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. In June 2008, the company acquired the Israeli
NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
listed software company
NetManage NetManage Inc. was a software company based in Cupertino, California, founded in 1990 by Zvi Alon, an Israeli engineer. The company's development centre was located at the MATAM technology park, in Haifa, Israel. In June 2008 the company was acq ...
for . 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 of Ryan-McFarland Corporation, a Micro Focus competitor in the 1980s. In July 2009, the company acquired
Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment product ...
, a developer of application lifecycle management tools, as well as the Quality Solutions part of
Compuware Compuware Corporation was an American software company based in Detroit, Michigan. The company offers products aimed at the information technology (IT) departments of large businesses, and its services also include testing, development, automation ...
, including the automation tool
TestPartner TestPartner is a GUI software testing tool from Micro Focus that is intended to enable software development project teams to functionally automate and test application Graphical User Interfaces, with the goal of being able to accomplish more appl ...
. In 2011, the company alleged that the
New South Wales Police Force The New South Wales Police Force (NSW Police Force; previously the New South Wales Police Service and New South Wales Police) is the primary law enforcement agency of the state of New South Wales, Australia. Divided into Police Area Commands (P ...
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 alleged in damages but later increased this to 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. In December 2013, Micro Focus acquired the Orbix, Orbacus and Artix software product lines from
Progress Software Progress Software Corporation (Progress) is an American public company that offers software for creating and deploying business applications. Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts with offices in 16 countries, the company posted revenues ...
. These market-leading implementations of the
CORBA The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between sys ...
standard were originally developed by
IONA Technologies IONA Technologies was an Irish software company founded in 1991. It began as a campus company linked to Trinity College Dublin had its headquarters in Dublin, and eventually also expanded its offices in Boston and Tokyo. It specialised in dist ...
. On 15 September 2014, Micro Focus announced that it would acquire
The Attachmate Group The Attachmate Group, Inc. was a privately held software holding company based in Houston, Texas in the United States. The major companies held by the group were Attachmate, NetIQ, Novell, and SUSE. Attachmate was owned by Wizard Parent LLCâ ...
for in shares, which would give it ownership of the
Attachmate Attachmate Corporation is a 1982-founded software company which focused on secure terminal emulation, legacy integration, and managed file transfer software. Citrix-compatibility and Attachment ''Reflection'' were enhanced/added offerings. Hist ...
,
NetIQ NetIQ is a product line within the CyberRes line of business at Micro Focus, which includes solutions focused on cybersecurity, including ArcSight, Fortify, Voltage, and NetIQ. NetIQ was previously based in Houston, Texas, with products that pr ...
,
Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...
, and
SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...
product lines. Attachmate's parent company Wizard Parent LLC—consisting of the investment groups
Elliott Management Corporation Elliott Investment Management is an American investment management firm. It is also one of the largest activist funds in the world. It is the management affiliate of American hedge funds Elliott Associates L.P. and Elliott International Limit ...
,
Francisco Partners Francisco Partners is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. Founded in August 1999 and based in San Francisco with offices in London and New York City, Francis ...
,
Golden Gate Capital Golden Gate Capital is an American private equity firm based in San Francisco. The firm makes investments in a number of select industries, including technology, financial services, retail and industrial, through leveraged buyout transactions, as ...
, and
Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo, LP, is an American private equity and growth capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Miami. It is known for being particularly active in acquiring software companies and has over $114 billion in assets under manage ...
, would hold a 40% stake in Micro Focus post-acquisition. With the purchase of Attachmate, Micro Focus became the owner of the
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
operating system. In 2015, Micro Focus acquired Authasas, which produces authentication middleware. On 22 March 2016, Micro Focus announced its intent to acquire
Serena Software With operations in 11 countries, Serena Software Inc. is an American software company that provides IT management products to enterprises. Serena solutions offer a process orchestration approach and span the areas of development, DevOps and IT ...
, then valued at . The acquisition was completed on 2 May 2016. On 7 September 2016, Micro Focus announced its intent to merge with
Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas, United States. HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the H ...
’s software business segment. The merger was completed on 1 September 2017. On 4 October 2016, Micro Focus announced it had acquired Gwava Inc., an enterprise information archiving business. 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. On 2 July 2018, it was announced that Micro Focus would sell its
SUSE SUSE ( , ) is a German-based multinational open-source software company that develops and sells Linux products to business customers. Founded in 1992, it was the first company to market Linux for enterprise. It is the developer of SUSE Linux Ent ...
business segment to
EQT Partners EQT AB Group is a global investment organization founded in 1994. Its funds invest in private equity, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity, and venture capital in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. , EQT's assets under management a ...
for $2.535 billion. In July 2020, Micro Focus acquired Turkish cybersecurity company ATAR Labs for an undisclosed amount. In August 2022, Canadian software firm
OpenText OpenText Corporation (also written ''opentext'') is a Canadian company that develops and sells enterprise information management (EIM) software. OpenText, headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of ...
announced that it would acquire Micro Focus in a deal valued at US$6billion, which is expected to close in early 2023.


Acucorp, Inc.

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. 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.


Liant Software Corporation

Liant Software Corporation was founded in 1983. This company was an outgrowth of the 3-way partnership named
Digitek Digitek was an early system software company located in Los Angeles, California. Digitek, co-founded in the early 1960s by three equal partners (James R. Dunlap, President plus Vice Presidents Donald Ryan and Donald Peckham who had worked togethe ...
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. Liant was still advertising its ''Open
PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...
'' product in 1995.


Ryan-McFarland Corporation

Dave McFarland and Don Ryan, both with a
Digitek Digitek was an early system software company located in Los Angeles, California. Digitek, co-founded in the early 1960s by three equal partners (James R. Dunlap, President plus Vice Presidents Donald Ryan and Donald Peckham who had worked togethe ...
background, co-founded Ryan-McFarland Corporation. Ryan-McFarland was a major source for FORTRAN,
COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...
and
BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
in the PC arena.


References


External links

{{authority control 1976 establishments in England 2005 initial public offerings British brands British companies established in 1976 Companies based in Newbury, Berkshire Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Information technology consulting firms of the United Kingdom International information technology consulting firms Multinational companies headquartered in England Software companies established in 1976 Software companies of England Announced information technology acquisitions Announced mergers and acquisitions