Fujitsu announces NetCOBOL for .NET

Fujitsu Australia has reaffirmed its support for the Microsoft .NET platform with the release of NetCOBOL for .NET, a rich development environment and compiler for COBOL built on Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework.

Fujitsu's NetCOBOL Release Candidate will enable Australian customers to leverage their investment in legacy COBOL systems by providing tight integration with the Microsoft .NET Framework. It offers a cost effective and highly scalable vehicle to take advantage of the exciting new technologies that Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the .NET platform offer, without needing to completely redevelop their COBOL systems.

"Our Australian customers have an enormous investment in legacy COBOL systems, which, until now, required an expensive and lengthy redevelopment effort in order to Web-enable them," said Fujitsu Australia's General Manager, Enterprise Development , Susan Hyland.

NetCOBOL will enable companies to integrate their COBOL code with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework enabling corporations to provide a broader range of services to customers and establish a common development platform for all developers.

"Fujitsu Australia has been monitoring the development of this solution for some time and is pleased to be able to offer the initial release to its customers. The Fujitsu Microsoft Solution Centre is geared up ready to support customers through any systems integration and support issues," Ms Hyland said.

NetCOBOL for .NET combines the reliability of Fujitsu's family of COBOL compilers with the Microsoft .NET Framework and the Microsoft award-winning development environment, Visual Studio .NET. The product includes a new compiler for the .NET Framework common language runtime engine, support for ASP.NET and XML Web services, and integration with the Visual Studio .NET Integrated Development Environment through its involvement with the Visual Studio .NET Integration Program (VSIP).

"Support for a wide variety of languages is an important part of the .NET strategy," said Tom Button, vice president for the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft Corp. "Because COBOL is a core programming language in the enterprise, having Fujitsu support COBOL for Microsoft .NET is an important piece of the puzzle in meeting the needs of enterprise developers."

NetCOBOL allows companies with existing COBOL assets to recompile their COBOL-85 programs and then enhance them using object-oriented extensions. The ability to compile existing code enables a clear migration path for customers wanting to migrate to the less expensive and more feature-rich Windows platform.

The Microsoft .NET Framework supports an unprecedented level of integration between a variety of languages and technologies. NetCOBOL also leverages the Microsoft .NET Framework strength in developing XML Web services, making it easier for COBOL programmers to expose their code as components.

The Release Candidate for NetCOBOL will be available in late February and follows a US-based beta testing period that began late in December, 2001. A final release version of NetCOBOL will be released in the second quarter of 2002.

The NetCOBOL Release Candidate targets the final version of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. For more details about NetCOBOL and information about obtaining a copy of the Release Candidate email COBOL@fujitsu.com.au or visit the Fujitsu COBOL Web site at www.adtools.com.