San Jose, July 11, 2000 -- Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Software Corporation today provided further details of their support for Microsoft's .NET Framework. Today's announcement sets the stage for Fujitsu Software Corporation's participation at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2000 in Orlando, Florida this week.

"Understanding the benefits of the Microsoft .NET Framework for COBOL programmers begins with appreciating the value of the Microsoft .NET Framework's common language runtime," said Basim Kadhim, Chief Architect, COBOL Product Group, for Fujitsu Software Corporation. "The runtime is a unifying architecture that provides the building blocks for language interoperability, security, and robustness. As Microsoft takes its .NET Framework to other devices, such as Windows CE devices, Fujitsu COBOL will be there as a first class language."

The common language runtime exposes an object-oriented type system and an intermediate language, called MSIL, that programming language vendors can target to work with the Microsoft .NET Framework. Fujitsu is constructing a new COBOL compiler to target the common language runtime so that COBOL programmers have seamless access to all that the .NET Framework has to offer.

John Montgomery, group product manager for the .NET Framework at Microsoft Corp., said, "COBOL is a key language in enterprise application development. When we set out to build elements of the .NET Framework, we realized that we would need to provide the ability for languages such as COBOL to take full advantage of the framework. We are therefore delighted to have Fujitsu COBOL participate in the .NET initiative."

Fujitsu Gives Details of COBOL Support for Microsoft .NET Framework

All of the programming languages in the Microsoft Visual Studio family, including recently announced C#, and other languages supported by third parties will also be capable of targeting the .NET Framework. "By supporting the .NET Framework, Fujitsu COBOL will have the best solution for language interoperability of any COBOL vendor in the market," said Ron Langer, Director COBOL Sales and Marketing, for Fujitsu Software Corporation.

Targeting the .NET Framework is also a prerequisite for direct language support of Active Server Pages+ (ASP+), Microsoft's successor to ASP. ASP+ uses an architecture that compiles web pages which results in tremendous performance gains. This architecture opens the door for compiled languages, such as COBOL, to be used directly in Web pages where previously only interpreted languages were usable. Similarly, Microsoft's new Web Services can be built using languages that target the .NET Framework. "We are very excited about providing COBOL developers with the tools to build end-to-end business applications on a variety of platforms, all in COBOL," said Langer.

For more information about Fujitsu COBOL, send an email to cobol@adtools.com.

About Fujitsu Limited
Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) is a leading provider of Internet- based information technology solutions for the global marketplace. Comprising over 500 group companies and affiliates worldwide -- including ICL, Amdahl and DMR Consulting -- it had consolidated revenues of 5.26 trillion yen ($49.6 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2000. Fujitsu's pace-setting technologies, world-class computing and telecommunications platforms, and global corps of over 60,000 systems and services experts make it uniquely positioned to unleash the infinite possibilities of the Internet to help its customers succeed. Altogether, the Fujitsu Group has 188,000 employees and operations in over 100 countries. Internet: http://www.fujitsu.com/

About Fujitsu Software Corporation
Fujitsu Software Corporation ("FS"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited ("Fujitsu"), was established in July 1991. FS is engaged in software research and development, software product and technology procurement, and software product sales. FS markets and sells the following products: Program Products, such as Fujitsu's network management application package, SystemWalker; Enterprise application server software products, INTERSTAGE; Work Flow products, i-Flow; COBOL language products; and Fujitsu's Japanese-language and translation software products, including Atlas and TransLinGo!.

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