Micro Focus Plc and Hewlett-Packard Co have updated their 12-year-old Cobol-under-Unix agreement by sharing the workload and coming out with a single product. Previously, the agreement was much looser and the development had been done separately. Newbury, UK-based Micro Focus, will do the initial work and then hand it to the joint development team. The firm says that although this will take away one or other company’s competitive advantage, it will get the product out sooner for HP-UX. Further announcements are expected in early this month, with a Windows NT collaboration likely. The Unix Cobol products will be ready in November.
