Micro Focus (LSE.MCRO.L), the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, today launched the latest version of its Modernization Workbench, a platform that helps companies gain key insight into the complex structure and interrelationships of their applications and hidden cost traps in their application portfolios. This latest version will help organizations decrease their ‘IT debt,’ or the cost associated with delaying applications’ maintenance due to IT budget cuts. According to Gartner, Inc.,“IT debt is estimated to be $500 billion, with the potential to grow to $1 trillion by 2015.”  This staggering figure demonstrates the need for CIOs to ensure they have complete visibility into the reality of their applications. The new Micro Focus Modernization Workbench Version 3.2 is designed to help IT departments easily perform sophisticated analytics to help determine enterprise application behavior and structure, giving CIOs full visibility into the value, cost and risk of the applications that are driving their business.

As enterprise applications have become increasingly complex, they have become more expensive to adapt to new business needs. Modernization Workbench 3.2 provides users with a richer, more flexible means to analyze these applications and deliver a clear, succinct picture of how individual pieces of software relate to one another. For example, IT architects will be able to see how a Java-based CRM application and a mainframe-based banking application are structured, giving them a clear picture of how these solutions interact and how to adapt these applications to new business priorities.

Modernization Workbench 3.2 also provides the ability for users to better filter application cost, value and risk data, enabling managers to make smarter decisions about where to focus scare resources. Additionally, based on customer demand, Modernization Workbench 3.2 now introduces flexible analysis that can be configured by users to understand even highly complex applications.

 According to Gartner analyst Andy Kyte, “The issue is not just that maintenance keeps on getting deferred, it is that the lack of an application inventory and the absence of a structured review process for the application portfolio. This means the IT management team is simply never aware of the true scale of the problem. This problem, hidden from sight, is getting bigger every year and more difficult to deal with every year.”

“Gartner’s recent IT Debt report showed that companies cannot keep pace with the rate of change in their organization, and unbeknownst to most enterprises, their large, complex applications are costing them an average of $200 million per year – mostly due to inefficiencies and inflexibility,” said Peter Mollins, head of application management and quality product marketing at Micro Focus. “With its ease of use and rich analytics, Modernization Workbench 3.2 is designed to efficiently help large organizations combat IT debt, and help them make better business decisions to decrease and eliminate that cost.”  

Additional features of Modernization Workbench 3.2 include:  

• Increased analytics within Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 via Micro Focus’ Analyzer Express module. With this enhancement, users can now gain insight into how COBOL applications are structured from within their IDE, shortening the development cycle.

• C# compatibility. In addition to COBOL, Java and PL/1, and other languages, the new version will be made available to C# users so they can create application portfolio management metrics and improve their visibility into application structure.