Micro Focus surges after signing commercial agreement with AWS

Micro Focus shares surged on Wednesday after the software company said it had signed a commercial agreement with Amazon Web Services.

The agreement formalises a strategic collaboration to accelerate the modernisation of mainframe applications and workloads of large public and private enterprises to the AWS Cloud.

Micro Focus said it will work with AWS to deploy its technology for customers looking to modernise their "business-critical mainframe applications and workloads to an agile, cloud-based production environment".

The company also said that it has issued warrants to Amazon’s investment arm to subscribe for up to 15.92m ordinary shares in Micro Focus at 446.60p each.

Chief executive Stephen Murdoch said: "This important strategic agreement between Micro Focus and AWS combines our technology leadership position in Application Modernisation with the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud provider.

"The modernisation of mainframe applications and workloads into cloud environments is increasingly becoming an imperative in the digital transformation programmes of large enterprises worldwide, and this collaboration has the potential to drive new customer adoption and growth within our Application Modernisation and Connectivity ("AMC") Product Group for an extended period."

At 0820 GMT, the shares were up 14% at 500.14p.