Micro Focus is hitting the application management dance floor to celebrate the arrival of its RUMBA 8.1 terminal emulation suite. This newly upgraded suite now includes Microsoft Office integration, a tile and zoom user interface, automatic historical data capture, FIPS-compliant security, and customizable developer tools.
The new version gives developers the ability to use custom tools to create new applications, as well as tap into the full functionality of existing business-critical applications running on the mainframe. By establishing new integration channels, Micro Focus is highlighting the fact that end users can now transfer data and transaction details within RUMBA to Microsoft Office applications. This functionality is said to enable the transfer of transaction information to other users, ensuring minimal business disruption while (in theory) improving customer satisfaction.
"As organizations look to reduce IT spending and increase operational efficiency, it’s critical that they identify the low-cost and low-risk strategies that will extend the lifecycle of business-critical applications," said Archie Roboostoff, product marketing director at Micro Focus. "By reducing the complexity and increasing user productivity, RUMBA 8.1 enables businesses to leverage terminal emulation as a strategic resource in any modernization plan."
In addition to the Microsoft Office integration, RUMBA 8.1 also captures historical data and screens during the normal use of the product. The immediate availability of past information and screens should allow end users to be more efficient and share specific insights with multiple users within the organization. The company also points out that users can build issue-specific profiles or best practices to allow customer service teams to access background information on recurring queries.
RUMBA 8.1 also features the RUMBA Developer Edition, which is compatible with .NET and Visual Studio 2008 / 2010.
Micro Focus is also announcing the availability of Web-to-Host 6.1, a new version of the browser-based terminal emulator, which incorporates features from RUMBA 8.1 and provides support for double-byte character set (DBCS) systems to support additional languages, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
