Last week I was delighted for OpenText to complete the acquisition of Micro Focus and welcome its customers, partners and employees to OpenText. We have significantly expanded our mission in Information Management.
Before completing the acquisition, but after we announced the transaction, IBM brought a lawsuit against Micro Focus alleging copyright infringement by Micro Focus Enterprise Suite products.
OpenText is out-innovating IBM, so apparently IBM’s chosen path was to litigate rather than innovate. In any event, Micro Focus, and now OpenText, confidently asserts that IBM’s claims are legally and factually without merit.
To our valued customers, we 100% stand behind Enterprise Suite products, and we, along with you, look forward to advancing your digital transformation strategies through innovation with our newly acquired Micro Focus products.
While the timing of IBM’s lawsuit was very curious (and transparent, in our view, as an act by a threatened competitor trying to disrupt OpenText), it did not impede OpenText’s acquisition of Micro Focus, nor will it slow down in the slightest our innovation.
To provide some further technical overview to the meritless IBM claim, it essentially pertains to IBM’s CICS TS computer program and an output file IBM calls a WSBIND file (which governs the way data is handled when an IBM CICS Web Services call is made).
Simply put, the use by a Micro Focus customer of WSBIND files that were created on the IBM mainframe (and that are required as per IBM requirements for deployment of data to and from the mainframe), do not infringe against IBM.
To continue the analogy, IBM cannot seriously claim that your customer data created on an IBM mainframe is owned by IBM. Such a claim would not be credible.
As outlined above, the IBM lawsuit involves limited Micro Focus products within Enterprise Suite, and the noted functionality is a very minor subset of the product offerings.
OpenText and Micro Focus stand ready and able to meet your company’s content needs and to provide the services and products that our companies have offered to our customers for decades.
As Micro Focus initially stated when IBM first made its claim, for more than 40 years Micro Focus has been delivering innovation to customers, and we look forward to continuing to address IBM’s threadbare allegations through all available channels.
I truly hope IBM stops this approach, sure to fail, and redirects these “investment dollars” to R&D; that is what an innovator would do. That is what OpenText is doing.
To our valued customers, I apologize for the distraction that IBM alone has created. OpenText 100% stands behind the Micro Focus Enterprise Suite products.
We 100% stand behind you.
I look forward to innovating and creating a better world, together.
Mark J. Barrenechea
OpenText CEO & CTO