Micro Focus®, the leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, today announced the availability of RUMBA 8.1, an enhanced version of the company’s terminal emulation suite. The upgraded suite now includes Microsoft Office integration, an innovative tile and zoom user interface, automatic historical data capture, FIPS-compliant security and customizable developer tools.  With this new version, users can gain flexibility, productivity and reliability in a complete and secure end-to-end solution. RUMBA 8.1 gives developers the ability to use custom tools to create new applications, as well as tap into the full functionality of existing business-critical applications running on the mainframe.

Through the integration with Microsoft Office, end users can immediately transfer data and transaction details within RUMBA to Microsoft Office applications This functionality enables the quick and easy transfer of transaction information to other users, ensuring minimal business disruption while improving customer end-user satisfaction. With this streamlined approach, RUMBA customers gain efficiency and realize cost savings with increased transaction productivity in a low-risk environment.

“As organizations look to reduce IT spending and increase operational efficiency, it’s critical that they identify the low-cost and low-risk strategies that will extend the lifecycle of business-critical applications,” said Archie Roboostoff, product marketing director at Micro Focus. “By reducing the complexity and increasing user productivity, RUMBA 8.1 enables businesses to leverage terminal emulation as a strategic resource in any modernization plan.”

In addition to the Microsoft Office integration, RUMBA 8.1 captures historical data and screens during the normal use of the product. The immediate availability of past information and screens allows end users to be more efficient and share specific insights with multiple users within the organization, reducing training time and increasing productivity. Users can also build issue-specific profiles or best practices, which allow customer service teams to instantly access background information on recurring queries and help end users accurately resolve problems.

RUMBA 8.1 also features the RUMBA Developer Edition which is compatible with .NET and Visual Studio 2008 / 2010. With this expanded compatibility, users have access to the latest APIs and can develop custom applications to effectively support their business needs in real time.

Customers using RUMBA 8.1 can also seamlessly migrate data and users from multiple emulators into RUMBA, keeping the user experience consistent and reducing costs.

In addition to RUMBA 8.1, Micro Focus is also announcing the availability of Web-to-Host 6.1, the new version of the browser-based terminal emulator which incorporates features from RUMBA 8.1 and provides support for double-byte character set (DBCS) systems to support additional languages, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. A new version of the user interface modernization solution, OnWeb 7.5, is also available in this recent Micro Focus terminal emulation update. OnWeb 7.5 brings development and runtime support for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 / 2010 and Windows 7; integration support for VT220 UNIX terminals; and security and performance upgrades.

For more information on Rumba 8.1,Web-to-Host 6.1 and OnWeb 7.5, visit
http://rumba.microfocus.com.