How it started
History
Micro Focus was founded by Brian Reynolds in Notting Hill in 1976. In 1981, it became the first company to win the Queen's Award for Industry purely for developing a software product. The product was CIS COBOL, a standard-compliant COBOL implementation for microcomputers.
In 1998, the company acquired Intersolv, Inc., an applications enablement business, for US$534 million and the combined business was renamed Merant. The same year the company acquired XDB Systems with their XDB Enterprise Server relational database management system. In 2001 the business was demerged from Merant with help from Golden Gate Capital Partners and once again became Micro Focus. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005.
In May 2007, San Diego–based Acucorp, Inc., a developer of COBOL development tools and provider of technologies for COBOL applications, was acquired by Micro Focus for its ACUCOBOL-GT product lines.
In June 2008, the company acquired the Israeli NASDAQ listed software company NetManage for US$73.3 million.
In July 2008, the company acquired the privately held Austin, Texas–based Liant Software Corporation for its RM/COBOL and PL/I product lines. Liant Software owned the assets of Ryan-McFarland Corporation, a Micro Focus competitor in the 1980s.
From Wikipedia’s article on Micro Focus International, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2