Pacific Exchange Selects Micro Focus to Migrate to Windows; Archipelago Holdings Subsidiary and Leading Derivative Market to Migrate Back Office Application.

ROCKVILLE, Md. & SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Micro Focus(R) (LSE:MCRO) today announced that the Pacific Exchange(R), a subsidiary of Archipelago Holdings (PSE:AX), has selected Micro Focus to migrate its clearing and billing application from the mainframe to the Microsoft(R) Windows(R) platform as part of an overall effort to save costs and improve productivity.

Pacific Exchange's back office application, which manages the clearing of trades, customer billing and reporting functions for the exchange were residing on an outsourced mainframe system. With growing costs of maintaining the application on an outsourced basis, the exchange explored ways to eliminate external costs while maintaining the performance of the application.

Following an analysis of a number of options, the exchange chose to move the application off the mainframe and onto the Windows platform using Micro Focus' Lift and Shift(TM) solution. To complete the migration of the CICS, JCL and COBOL code, the exchange is using Micro Focus Studio for application development and Micro Focus Server for deployment to the Windows environment.

"We've chosen to move our applications to a more agile platform like Windows to eliminate the significant costs associated with mainframe maintenance while at the same time increasing our internal control over core applications," says Steve Hirsch, managing director of database operations at Archipelago. "Micro Focus offered us the most comprehensive solution to meet our goal to migrate the back office functions, which are critical to our overall technology infrastructure, within a short time frame. We expect to complete the migration, and as a result, complete our transition off the mainframe, in the first quarter of 2006."

The Pacific Exchange anticipates that the migration will provide a 5-10 times boost in performance and expects that their cost savings will kick in within six months.

"Organizations like the Pacific Exchange are constantly looking for ways to reuse legacy applications without sacrificing the performance and reliability on which they rely to support mission-critical business processes," said Mike Gilbert, vice president of marketing for Micro Focus. "Through the Lift and Shift approach, Micro Focus provides a low-risk solution that enables the Pacific Exchange to eliminate mainframe maintenance costs, reuse existing business processes, while simultaneously improving their performance."

Micro Focus - Unlocking the Value of Legacy(TM)

Micro Focus is a leading provider of legacy development and deployment software for enterprise platforms. Micro Focus enables organizations to reduce costs and increase agility with minimal risk by reusing their legacy applications with contemporary architectures and Web services. Founded in 1976, Micro Focus is a global company with principal offices in the United Kingdom, United States and Japan. For more information, visit www.microfocus.com.

Micro Focus is a registered trademark and Lift and Shift and Unlocking the Value of Legacy are trademarks of Micro Focus. All other products mentioned in this announcement are trademarks of their respective owners.