Acucorp Announces Support for IBM TXSeries

Company’s extend solutions enable customers to distribute and modernize valuable CICS assets across their enterprise

San Diego, CA - August 20, 2004 - Acucorp, Inc., an IBM business partner and international provider of legacy application modernization solutions, today announces support for IBM TXSeries for Multiplatforms®. This support, available as part of the extend® suite of technologies, allows corporations, government end users and independent software vendors (ISVs) to exploit the flexibility and cost savings inherent in IBM’s distributed environments as well as rejuvenate business applications while still preserving investments in CICS®.

Leveraging their existing CICS skills, companies now have the ability to build new applications on distributed platforms that work with IBM’s TXSeries and Acucorp’s ACUCOBOL-GT® development system, part of extend. Included in ACUCOBOL-GT is a compiler; runtime, known as the COBOL Virtual Machine^TM; indexed file system; support utilities; and source-level, interactive debugger. With these tools, developers can access a wide range of COBOL modernization capabilities not previously available on the mainframe. In addition to using IBM’s and Acucorp’s technologies for new CICS development, organizations that wish to transition host systems can simplify the process by utilizing the robust, secure and scalable CICS facilities available in TXSeries -- including familiar APIs, a common program structure and interoperability with other CICS environments. With Acucorp’s extend, these companies can modernize and integrate the COBOL business logic inherent in their CICS systems with new technologies, transitioning select applications at their own pace, while avoiding the cost and risk of re-engineering those mainframe systems. They may also expose their vital COBOL programs to a wide range of productivity-enhancing capabilities -- dramatically increasing their return on investment and lowering their total cost of ownership. Along with new application development and application reuse, the IBM-Acucorp solution enables ISVs to design and sell COBOL programs that run in distributed environments on TXSeries CICS.

"Our premier TXSeries technologies and Acucorp’s COBOL modernization solutions have made it possible for IBM enterprise-class customers to have a low-cost, high-performance method for maintaining and modernizing their mission-critical mainframe applications," explains Robert Elder, IBM’s TXSeries Development and Services Manager. "Not only will these customers benefit from the familiarity of CICS and the scalability of TXSeries, but they will also have the tools necessary to greatly enhance the COBOL programs that are vital to their organizations."

The combination of IBM’s TXSeries and Acucorp’s ACUCOBOL-GT development system makes it possible to protect existing technology and resource investments while offering modernization solutions including Java, Oracle, DB2® and WebSphere® interoperability on IBM distributed platforms as well as GUI development and Internet deployment.

"Acucorp has a long history of support for IBM and its technology solutions," says Dr. Pamela Coker, Acucorp’s President and CEO. "With the TXSeries offering, we are able to provide our customers with another option for legacy preservation and modernization -- allowing them to take advantage of the proven performance of CICS as well as the flexibility of a distributed environment."

Highly portable and interoperable, Acucorp’s extend solutions provide developers with innovative tools for revitalizing their COBOL applications. These tools include such technologies as Web services deployment in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA); .NET, Java and XML interoperability; Web, mobile device and relational database management system (RDBMS) access; GUI design; and thin client architecture distributed computing. As an "Add-In Provider” member of the Eclipse Foundation, Acucorp is also working on an ACUCOBOL-GT Eclipse Plug-In that will allow developers to take advantage of ACUCOBOL-GT using the Eclipse open-source integrated development environment.

About Acucorp

Founded in 1988, Acucorp, Inc. is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, California, USA with additional offices in Great Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Acucorp's products are distributed in more than 100 countries throughout the world. Its over 4,000 customers and 1,000,000 end users include Diageo (formerly Seagram Americas), Ford Argentina, L’Oréal Mexico, Red Cross Belgium, Siemens, Sport Chalet, The Travelex Group (formerly Thomas Cook), Tower Records and Warner Music Group. The Company designs, develops, and markets innovative solutions for extending the life of vital COBOL business systems. Additional information about Acucorp is available at www.acucorp.com.

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Acucorp, extend, and ACUCOBOL are trademarks or registered trademarks of Acucorp, Inc.
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