Expands customer proposition to further enable customers to leverage further their prior investments and exploit the latest industry innovation.Enlarged Group will have combined revenue of $1.4 billion and a Group employing more than 4,500 staff, located in all key geographies, and serving more than 30,000 customers.

Micro Focus International plc ("Micro Focus" or "the Group", LSE: MCRO.L), the international software product group, announced today that it has reached agreement on the terms of a merger with the Attachmate Group. The Enlarged Group will be a leading global infrastructure software company with combined revenues of $1.4 billion*, Underlying Adjusted EBITDA of $0.5 billion* and operations in all major geographies, combining the talents of more than 4,500 employees.

The Merger represents a significant increase in the scale and breadth of Micro Focus, combining Micro Focus' strong product franchises with the Attachmate Group product portfolios serving adjacent and complementary market segments. The Enlarged Group would benefit from a top three global market position in a number of key segments, including off-mainframe COBOL, mainframe modernization, host connectivity and Linux operating systems.

Commenting on the proposed Merger, Kevin Loosemore, Executive Chairman, Micro Focus, said: "There is compelling rationale behind this Merger. Both companies are well established enterprise software vendors operating at a global scale with a presence in all significant international markets. Both hold a portfolio of software solutions which address specific aspects of the infrastructure software requirements of a substantial installed base of large enterprise customers, with no material customer concentration or direct overlap; and both Attachmate and Micro Focus' respective product groups are predominantly mature solution sets which are embedded within the IT infrastructures of large corporate customers."

"The Board believes that the Merger will deliver a more attractive and expanded product offer to customers. The Enlarged Group will provide choices as organizations address increasingly complex IT challenges and strive to preserve business logic and data as they bridge from the old and the new to exploit new technology trends, such as the cloud or mobility", continued Loosemore. "The Board believes that the proposed Merger presents a rare opportunity to achieve a significant increase in the scale and breadth of Micro Focus, with the potential to deliver shareholder returns that are superior to those likely to be achieved on an organic basis."

Attachmate solutions help organizations worldwide put their existing IT assets to work. Built to integrate existing systems and emerging technologies, Attachmate helps organizations extend, manage, and secure essential business information. The Attachmate Group maintains its principal office in Houston, Texas and operates its business from four main distributed offices in Provo, Utah; Houston, Texas; Seattle, Washington and Nuremburg, Germany. It comprises four principal software product portfolios:

Attachmate, which delivers advanced software for terminal emulation, legacy modernization and managed file transfer;

NetIQ provides integrated identity, access, security and data center solutions to help organizations securely deliver, measure and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.

Novell delivers solutions that make people more productive and work environments more secure and manageable.

SUSE offers Linux and open source solutions, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, that provide reliable, interoperable Linux and cloud infrastructure solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility.

"The merger of the Attachmate Group with Micro Focus will result in a greater breadth of solutions, extensive global presence, and significant financial strength," said Jeff Hawn, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Attachmate Group. "The combined company will be even better able to help customers address their business and IT challenges in light of increasing complexity, change and risk."

Like Micro Focus, the Attachmate Group has been in business for over 30 years. It has more than 3,300 employees across 80 offices worldwide from which it serves more than 23,000 customers. Micro Focus' market leading software is used by more than 11,000 customers, with 2 million licensed users, and the Group operates from 37 offices worldwide, employing more than 1,200 employees.