On 20 November 2014, Micro Focus completed its merger with the Attachmate Group of companies and began a period of integration planning which is now complete. The key objective throughout the work has been our continued commitment to deliver the highest levels of service and business value to our customers. I am pleased to confirm the following important points:
- Our strategy is not changing. We enable customers to exploit trends such as the cloud, mobility and virtualization, whilst also leveraging prior investments and established IT assets—we describe this as bridging the old and the new. The merger creates a leading technology company allowing us to execute this strategy more completely and effectively.
- Our integration plan improves many things. It will enable us to operate:
- One single company with a single vision and a single set of values.
- An aligned portfolio of products from development through to delivery.
- Customer facing teams organised by geography to better support customers' needs.
- An improved channel strategy to ensure customers have the flexibility to work with the right people in the right place.
- We will be increasingly consistent and straightforward to do business with:
- We have developed an internal roadmap to simplify our systems and processes.
- We have launched a customer charter for compliance. This spells out how we will work with customers to ensure the appropriate use of our Intellectual Property and how we will approach the resolution of any issues that can arise from time to time.
Accomplishing these things requires change and I want to take this opportunity to underline what will not change; our continued commitment to excellence in customer support:
- Our team of customer care and technical support professionals remain available through your existing engagement model.
- Existing product strategies and roadmap commitments will not change in the short term but will evolve over time as we sharpen our market and customer focus. We intend to engage customers more proactively in this process moving forward.
- During our history we have successfully implemented many integrations in the business and will benefit from that experience in completing the planned integration work effectively.
To ensure a clear path through the work we are making the following changes to the way we organise the business:
- The product portfolios of Micro Focus, Borland, NetIQ, Attachmate and Novell will be brought together under the one portfolio of Micro Focus. Each product will have a defined strategy created and managed by a global product group.
- In addition to the Micro Focus portfolio, we will have a second, dedicated portfolio focused on SUSE. The Linux market and open source community have unique characteristics and this focus is essential to our commitment to deliver innovative solutions built on SUSE's technology heritage and track record of delivery.
- Finally, we will be simplifying the branding and packaging of our portfolios. As an example, we will combine our leading host connectivity solutions of Reflection and Rumba into one set of Micro Focus branded solutions offering the best of both technologies. A similar approach of simplification and alignment will be taken systematically, resulting in one company operating two product portfolios, namely Micro Focus and SUSE.
I am excited about the future for our company and fully recognise and appreciate the investment you have made in our products. Let me take this opportunity to reassure you that we remain firmly committed to your success by delivering great products and outstanding customer service, and should you have any questions or wish to discuss these developments further, please contact your account executive, partner manager, or any of our executive team.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Murdoch
Chief Operating Officer
Micro Focus
