San Diego, CA - August 19, 2002 Acucorp, Inc., a leading provider of application development solutions that solve mission-critical business issues, and Transoft, Inc., an international software company that produces cutting-edge transformation and integration products, have recently signed an agreement that will enable COBOL programs to be deployed as Web services as well as interoperate with other applications and languages. This fully integrated technology, part of Acucorp's upcoming extend(tm)6 Interoperability Series, will combine Transoft's Language Component Adapter with Acucorp's ACUCOBOL(tm)-GT development environment-allowing COBOL programmers to more easily transform their existing business rules into re-usable application services. These application services, or Web services, may then be accessed by popular industry-standard interfaces using one of Transoft's many Component Connectors.

Acucorp's new Web service technology will include its own component broker, which can also work with WebSphere and WebLogic, ensuring both a robust and scalable deployment environment. In addition, the offering will feature access to some of the interfaces not available through other COBOL vendors including COM, J2EE, CORBA, XML and .NET. As a result, developers will find it easier to adapt their current business systems-thus experiencing increased program performance, scalability, portability and interoperability while, at the same time, dramatically reducing the costs, risks and time spent enhancing their COBOL applications.

"COBOL application modernization has always been our number one priority," says Drake Coker, Acucorp's Co-Founder and Chief Scientist. "By bringing other tools into the extend programming mix, our ISVs and end users can make more effective use of modern technologies and programming languages while still retaining all of the hard work they have put into their COBOL applications over the years."

According to the Gartner Group, the market for Web services is expected to grow to $28 billion in software and sales in the next three years. Using Acucorp's solutions- which provide Internet deployment, GUI development, Thin Client and distributed computing architecture, COBOL access to RDBMS data and ODBC data sources, and programmer productivity capabilities-companies that have significant investments in COBOL can soon take advantage of this Web services trend by incorporating newer programming languages into their existing applications. They can also reuse their current COBOL business logic in newer development environments.

"Combining our technology with Acucorp's will produce one of the most robust COBOL solutions for application modernization," says Paul Holland, CEO of Transoft, Inc. "And, it's this evolutionary path to program extension that will permit developers to mix newer computing languages with tried-and-true business logic-offering them the best of both worlds."

Holidaybreak Plc., the market leader in camping and mobile-home holidays in Europe and the leading provider of hotel short-breaks in the U.K., has already begun incorporating Acucorp's and Transoft's solutions in order to develop a COLD Fusion Web interface into the Camping Division's main reservations system.

"By taking advantage of these innovative application extension solutions, we are in the process of integrating our core ACUCOBOL-GT business system with our Web-based applications," says Lucy Scott, Systems Project Manager of Eurocamp/Keycamp, part of the Holidaybreak group of companies. "Best of all, the system has allowed us to use existing business logic without any major redevelopment of the ACUCOBOL modules."

About Acucorp

Founded in 1988, Acucorp, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, California with additional offices in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Acucorp's products are distributed in more than 75 countries throughout the world, and its technology users include DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Lockheed Martin, McDonald's Corporation, Siemens, Thomas Cook, Tower Records and Warner Music Group.  The company continues to design, develop, and market robust solutions for extending the life of inherited COBOL applications. Additional information about Acucorp is available at www.acucorp.com.

Acucorp, extend, and ACUCOBOL are trademarks or registered trademarks Acucorp, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks used are the property of their respective owners.