Opentext have sale all this products to rocket software and we will see how the cobol products will progress in the future.

I mean we need a "Netexpress 9.0" System and not only Visual Cobol with only dotnet integration and managed cobol. The bettest way is to use directly C# completly and not this bad managed cobol...

This since long time Microfocus Product was bad at the moment "MF" want to have runtime license for each customer! Will Microsoft want Runtime cost for his developer software?

Many programmers keep staying on Netexpress 3.1 for this reason!

Hope Rocket Software will learn from this history and will go a better way?

Wich prices will have this products by Rocket?

Wich products have migrated?

There is not many information, not on Opentext side, not on Rocket Side!

Not good for customers....

Waiting for better timer...

Thank you very much for your advice.

Hello Ayoush, you're welcome to contact me directly and we can talk through the upgrade process and associated costs - you can reach me at snielsen@rocketsoftware.com 

There have been other remarks in the thread about the Net Express line of products so I wanted to give you a little more background here. For your information, I am responsible for Product Management of the COBOL business and have been for the last 15 years or so. Before that I worked in the engineering team for 10 years. Let me explain a couple of points about our strategy for COBOL.

The Net Express and Server Express products were established in the 1990s and were based on predecessor products going back to when Micro Focus was founded in 1976. Despite all the concern around Y2K, COBOL applications remain critical to organizations around the globe and during this era these products became the most widely used for COBOL application development on Windows and Unix and Linux systems. We continue to maintain and provide support for these products today.

By around 2010 we recognized a new set of challenges facing organizations with longstanding COBOL applications. We heard from many customers about the need to integrate with modern IT architectures in order to deliver new innovation for their businesses as well as challenges they were facing ensuring continued supply of engineers able to work on these applications – there has been much industry coverage on this topic. To address these challenges, we designed a new suite of products under the Visual COBOL banner which are based on our longstanding expertise in COBOL and brings this together modern industry standard development tools and access to new platforms and architectures.

The Visual COBOL product line which has now been in the market nearly 15 years. It is our leading product line with the majority of our customer base deploying their applications under Visual COBOL. Collectively across our AMC business, we invest tens of millions of dollars into R&D every year to ensure our products remain at the forefront of industry innovation and give you the best option to reuse your existing applications.

We have done our best to enable customers to move at their own pace in adoption of Visual COBOL and have not sundowned the predecessor products. For many customers, the timing of the upgrade is often driven by the need to upgrade or change the operating platform.

If you expect your COBOL applications will still be used in your business for the foreseeable future, we strongly recommend you progress an upgrade to Visual COBOL – this product line carries the focus of our roadmap and investment and we will be best placed to support your needs here.

The good news is that over a 1000 customers have already taken this journey and tens of millions of end users are accessing Visual COBOL applications today. We have some fantastic examples to share about how our customers have been able to innovate using Visual COBOL and I'm really proud about what we've achieved here.

Thank you very much for all the information.
I have known the Microfocus Cobol products since 1986, Cobol Level II and have probably used all compilers after that (Workbench, Netexpress, VC).
I have now been retired (pensioner) for a short time, but I still manage a few applications and am active as a Cobol multiplier.
Unfortunately, there are no training opportunities for Visual Cobol and so far I haven't seen any professional graphical user interfaces,
that were built with VC managed cobol.
Why can't a Netexpress 9.0 exist in parallel alongside VC 9.0, Netexpress doesn't know Json, VC doesn't know the MF tools like CBL2Wizard.
Many graphical applications are based on Dialog System, which has not been further developed for years.
As a Rocket Software representative, can you comment on the runtime licenses?
What starting price can you offer your customers to switch to VC in the latest version?
Thank you for your reply

I subscribe to Greiner CLaude's comments.
I also know Microfocus Cobol products since 1986, Cobol Level II and I have also used all compilers after that (Workbench, Netexpress, VC).
I am retired since 2020 (pensioner), but I still manage some applications developed with MF Cobol in its NE and VC versions, for which I have development and runtime licenses.

I confirm that there are no training opportunities for Visual Cobol and so far I have not seen any professional GUI. that were built with cobol managed by VC.
I have tested that applications developed with native COBOL in Netexpress are imported to VC without major incompatibilities, and function in this environment correctly.

I also subscribe to the demand for the release of a new version of NetExpress 9.0, for those of us who remain in native Cobol.
Many graphical applications are based on Dialog System, which has not been developed for years.

As a representative of Rocket Software, will you keep the same licensing policy?

Thank you for your response

Are you looking for practical Visual Cobol training courses?

Look there!!!

https://www.riemke-it.de/schulungen-arten.htm

(You should actually know that)