Micro Focus

Micro Focus develops tools for building, operating, protecting and analyzing data in the enterprise. These tools help prevent a gap between existing and new technologies so that customers can simultaneously work and digitally transform their enterprise.

Products and Services

Among the most popular Micro Focus products is Data Protector, a backup and recovery solution.

Micro Focus offers its own hosting solutions (Micro Focus Server Enterprise Edition) integrated into the COBOL development environment (Net Express for.NET and Visual COBOL for integration with Visual Studio 2010), a suite of management applications (Micro Focus EnterpriseView), and a variety of other products to support the entire application development cycle.

Micro Focus Enterprise Security Products (ESP) includes ArcSight, Fortify and Atalla product lines.

Performance indicators

2017: Revenue below expectations

In fiscal 2017, Micro Focus's revenue fell below analysts' expectations, sending British software maker's quotes tumbling.

For the 12-month reporting period ended April 30, 2017, Micro Focus's revenue reached $1.38 billion, up 11% from a year earlier. The company's net profit fell from 163 to 157.8 million. dollars

Micro Focus Headquarters

As noted by The Financial Times, although Micro Focus sales met the vendor's own forecast, they turned out to be less than those expected by analysts due to the weak second half of the year.

Weak financial results sent Micro Focus's share price down 6% to £20.62 - its lowest in a 9-month period.

Suse, which as part of Micro Focus develops open source software and Linux distributions, brought the parent group 22% of revenue in fiscal 2017. Suse's revenue amounted to $303.4 million against $253.8 million in 2016. In North America, the turnover reached $121.8 million.

In 2016, Micro Focus announced two major acquisitions - Serena Software and HPE Software companies. Micro Focus Executive Chairman Kevin Loosemore said the company will continue to actively develop its M&A strategy to grow the business.

Over the past six years, we have made 10 acquisitions and successfully integrated these companies. After the closing of the HPE Software transaction, revenue will increase by about 10 times compared to 2011, he said.

Micro Focus is interested in software developers with a large number of customers, but with a business that has stopped growing. HPE has 170 product lines against Micro Focus's 140.^[1]

History

2024: Russia closes entry to Cisco and Micro Focus representatives in response to Britain's aggressive anti-Russian course

In connection with the continuation of the British government's "aggressive anti-Russian course," in which London declares the task of inflicting a "strategic defeat on the battlefield" on Russia, actively applies the mechanism of sanctions restrictions and conducts a subversive information and propaganda campaign, a decision was made to include in the Russian "stop list" a number of representatives of government agencies, the IT sector and the legal services market in Britain. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced this on its website on April 10, 2024^[2].

Among them are employees of British companies, in particular, Micro Focus, which provide Ukrainian law enforcement agencies with the cyber defense software and services necessary in the process of collecting data in order to strike at Russian troops and infrastructure.

The activities of such IT companies that are accomplices of neo-Nazis lead to the death of people and can be directed against any country whose authorities will not arrange Anglo-Saxons, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

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Freepik

Of those related to Micro Focus (Micro Focus Group Limited and Micro Focus Limited), entry was banned, in particular, to sales director Stuart McGill, ex-chief financial officer Christopher Musker, former top financial officer Rupert Green, former chief financial officer Matthew Ashley, company board member Mark Wilkinson.

Cisco representatives were also under Russian sanctions: director of consulting services Chris Reeves and director of state and corporate affairs Matthew Houlihan.

The list also includes representatives of TechUK, Helsing, Improbable, NEC Software Solutions, Skyral Defense, the British Department of Entrepreneurship and Trade and the law firm Fieldfisher.

All persons on the list are British subjects.

The Foreign Ministry also included "persons involved in attempts to impose on economic operators of Central Asian states compliance with illegitimate unilateral restrictions imposed by the West."

2022: OpenText acquires Micro Focus for $6 billion

Canadian software company OpenText bought British data backup software developer Micro Focus for $6 billion. The deal was announced on August 25, 2022.

Under the terms of the agreement, OpenText will pay 532 pence for each Micro Focus share. This is almost double the previous exchange rate at the time of the closing of the exchange, Bloomberg notes.

OpenText bought data backup software developer Micro Focus for $6 billion

OpenText said that to finance the takeover, they will resort to a new loan in the amount of $4.6 billion, and also use $600 million from the already open credit line and available funds on their balance sheet.

Micro Focus is one of the world's largest software developers whose software products help companies in areas such as cybersecurity, IT operations management, communications and messaging.

Micro Focus serves thousands of organizations around the world, including many leading Fortune Global 500 firms. According to information on the website of the British vendor, his clients include Airbus, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Kellogg.

Recently, Micro Focus has not been doing well: since 2018, the company has annually recorded a drop in revenue and adjusted profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and depreciation.

Under the leadership of CEO Mark Barrenechea, Open Text has entered into a number of transactions to strengthen its position in the software market. Among them - the purchase of the American supplier of data protection tools Zix Corporation and the information security company Carbonite. The deal with Micro Focus is notable for its scale: according to Bloomberg, Open Text will pay almost half of its current market value of $12.8 billion for the takeover.

Commenting on the acquisition, the head of OpenText said that it will contribute to revenue growth and the scale of operations, as it will provide access to the target market of $170 billion.^[3][4]

2019: Purchase of cyber threat predictor Interset

In mid-February 2019, Micro Focus announced the acquisition of a developer of predictive cyber threats, ON Interset but decided not to disclose the purchase price. The deal is already closed. More. here

2018

SUSE sale for $2.5 billion

In early July 2018, Micro Focus announced the sale of Linux distribution developer SUSE. This asset is bought by the Swedish investment company EQT Partners for $2.5 billion. Read more here.

Stephen Murdoch is the new CEO

On March 19, 2018, Micro Focus announced a CEO change. It was Chief Operating Officer Stephen Murdoch, who succeeded Chris Hsu. The latter spent a little over a year at the head of Micro Focus. Read more here.

Source Code Disclosure to Russian Authorities

On January 25, 2018, Reuters reported that SAP, Symantec, Micro Focus and McAfee agreed to disclose to the Russian Ministry of Defense the source codes of some of their software products to search for vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit to hack IT systems. Read more here.

2016

Purchase of Serena

In March 2017, Micro Focus International announced the purchase of corporate POSerena Software for $540 million. The deal was closed in May of that year.

HP Enterprise Merges Subsidiary with Micro Focus

American IT company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HP Enterprise, HPE) will merge its non-core asset subsidiary with British Micro Focus, writes Financial Times^[5]

It is reported that a deal of $8.8 billion will lead to the creation of one of the largest IT companies in the UK in terms of revenue.

As part of the agreement, Micro Focus will pay HPE $2.5 billion in cash, while HPE shareholders will own 50.1% of the combined company. As expected, the annual revenue of the new enterprise will be approximately $4.5 billion.

The proposed merger will complement the portfolio of two major vendors. The annual level of sales of companies will be approximately $4.5 billion - according to representatives of Micro Focus, this will lead to the formation of one of the largest global companies to build a software infrastructure with global territorial coverage, capable of developing innovations in both traditional and new segments of the IT market.

In particular, the merger with HPE Software will expand the portfolio of solutions in the field of IT Operations Management, Software Delivery & Test, Enterprise Security, Information Management & Governance and Big Data Analytics, providing Micro Focus with additional capabilities in the form of more products that optimize existing IT infrastructures with the latest technologies, the company noted.

At the same time, Micro Focus and HPE announced their intentions to expand the commercial cooperation between SUSE and HPE, making SUSE the preferred Linux partner of HPE, as well as to find ways to interact on the joint use of SUSE's OpenStack expertise to develop innovative HPE solutions such as HPE Helion OpenStack and Stackato Platform-as-a-Service. SUSE and HPE are now working to define the main directions and specifics of commercial cooperation.

2014: Attachmate Group's $1.2bn purchase

September 17, 2014 it became known about the purchase by Micro Focus of the owner of Novell - Attachmate Group, for $1.2 billion. Novell, in turn, is the owner of Novell Linux and SuSE Linux.

The seller was an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital, Elliott Management and Thomas Bravo.

The deal is expected to close in November 2014.

Attachmate specializes in the development of terminal emulators that implement access to environments, IBM,, UNIX Linux OpenVMS, HP and X11 from computers and mobile devices. The company's portfolio includes a PC X server for CADCAM rendering/-projects and a data management solution.

Since 2010, Attachmate owns Novell, it was acquired for $2.2 billion.

SuSE Linux was purchased by Novell in 2003.

2009: Borland Software Purchase

In May 2009, Micro Focus International entered into an agreement to purchase Borland Software. The company believes that the purchase of Borland will allow them to strengthen their position in the software quality testing market.

Notes