Microsoft Corp yesterday also announced that it will stop selling its Cobol Professional Development System product on June 30 and instead reinforce the strategic alliance it has had for five years with Micro Focus Plc. This has been based on an OEM pact for the Cobol compiler and debugging technology in the Development System, but Microsoft is withdrawing that the better to address the needs of corporate Cobol customers with a broader range of Micro Focus products that both companies will promote. The new relationship will focus on marketing as well as technology and Microsoft will work with Micro Focus to move its existing Cobol customers to Micro Focus products, and the two will try to establish a range of Micro Focus Cobol products as the best Cobol workstation implementations for Windows and for NT.
