Fujitsu Remains Committed to No Runtime Fees for Latest Versions of NetCOBOL for .NET, Windows and SPARC

Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation today announced the latest update releases of its NetCOBOL(R) for .NET (V3.1), NetCOBOL for Windows(R) (V9.0) and NetCOBOL for SPARC(R) Architecture (V9.0) products. These updates provide many enhancements that will further empower developers targeting the .NET, Windows and SPARC environments. Enhancements include support for Windows Vista(R), support for development using Eclipse in NetCOBOL for Windows, support for the unified programming model of the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) addition to .NET, productivity enhancements, and many detailed enhancements to product components. The updates allow developers to take advantage of the latest technologies for their chosen platform.

Fujitsu Computer Systems remains committed to not charging runtime license fees for applications created using NetCOBOL compilers. The recent consolidation of COBOL vendors has reduced competition in this market, leaving COBOL users with fewer licensing choices and great uncertainty in their future cost structure. Fujitsu Computer Systems is the only major COBOL compiler vendor that offers the model, standard with most other programming languages such as Visual Basic, Java and C#, of letting developers purchase the compiler once and then produce and distribute any number of copies of an application without having to track, report and pay for each application installation.

The following customers came to NetCOBOL from other COBOL vendors:

“A key factor in our choosing to use NetCOBOL was the lack of runtime license fees,” said Eddie L. Brown, CLU, CPCU manager - information services, PDMA, Inc. “This made a big difference to our customers who previously had to pay our compiler vendor for both runtime licenses and annual maintenance on those licenses. Also, we have found it very easy to integrate the NetCOBOL runtime support with our applications -- we just perform a build and send a single integrated package to our customers. With these two benefits the feedback from our customers on switching to NetCOBOL has been very positive.”

“A major consideration for our customers is the TCO of using our software,” said Mike Stith, senior manager, Cincom Global Customer Support, Cincom. “Either before they purchase, or in periodic checks thereafter, they want to know that it makes financial sense to use our package. Using NetCOBOL with no runtime license fees can make a huge difference in TCO for our customers -- in some cases reducing their annual costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Providing the same functionality to our customers at a lesser cost is just plain common sense to us.”

Recognizing the importance of the licensing model to customers, Ron Langer, vice president of legacy modernization at Fujitsu Computer Systems said, “We have a constant stream of companies coming to us to inquire what it takes to migrate their applications to NetCOBOL primarily because they want to escape from the vise-like grip of COBOL runtime license fees. Although these fees are a cash cow for the vendors that use that model, it can really cripple the businesses of COBOL developers who need to provide value to their customers. I am as sure today as I was more than ten years ago when we chose not to charge runtime licenses fees that this is the right model. Customers want to make decisions about the business value of their COBOL code without feeling unnecessary cost pressures from high-deployment fees charged by their COBOL compiler vendor.”