Last year’s decision by IBM to drop Microsoft Corp’s Cobol com piler in favour of a Micro Focus Plc version, seems to have prompted Microsoft itself into following suit. According to details of the strategic marketing alliance released by Micro Focus yesterday, the Newbury-based company has now agreed to license the new Version 1.1 of its Cobol/2 compiler for OS/2 and MS-DOS machines to Microsoft, which will distribute the product as the Microsoft Cobol Optimising Compiler version 3.0, in place of its proprietary Cobol offering. Micro Focus bases its true 1988 status claims for the product – and Microsoft’s decision to adopt it – on Cobol/2’s inbuilt compliance with the ANSI ’85 Cobol standard, the X/Open standard, and IBM’s own Systems Appli cation Architecture standard, together with the support it pro vides for a range of mini, micro and IBM mainframe dialects. Royalty payments aside, the deal will also provide Micro Focus with an entree to new corporate data-processing departments and a significantly expanded customer base, which the company also plans to target with its range of add-on software development tools such as the VS Cobol Workbench development environment. For its part, Microsoft believes that the introduction of the Cobol 3.0 product will enable it to provide across-the-range Cobol technology, and cash in on the move away from mainframes to MS-DOS micros for the development of applications. Under terms of the alliance, the pair have also agreed to regular technology exchanges, and plan short-term to ensure compatibility with Presentation Manager, LAN Manager and SQL Server.
