NetManage, Inc., a software company that says it provides a fast way to transform legacy applications into new Web-based business solutions, has announced it has opened an office in Shanghai, China, offering a suite of integration technology tools and professional services to its 2,000 global customers in the region.

This office opening marks the next phase in the company's accelerated growth and expansion into new markets, as NetManage enables organizations to modernize from historically extensive mainframe to Web-based systems. By focusing on this legacy-rich region and leveraging existing back-end systems, the company continues to drive the proliferation of service oriented architectures (SOAs). NetManage will provide a gateway for Chinese-based IT firms to do business with U.S. based customers and will be adapting its software in China for easy adoption.

"By expanding our efforts into China, NetManage furthers its commitment to provide customers and partners the ability to seamlessly leverage their extensive mainframe investments. Through local experts, we are now offering unprecedented flexibility and speed of deployment when integrating and implementing enterprise information systems-based business initiatives," said Zvi Alon, president, chairman and CEO of NetManage. "By establishing this office, we are poised to take advantage of the abundant talent and market opportunities that exist in order to grow our footprint in the region."

The new office will be led by Yi Fan Chen, vice president and general manager of China operations for NetManage, who will work toward building the company into a market-share leader in SOA-enabling software. Prior to NetManage, Chen served as a consultant at Harrison Enterprises, Inc. for 10 years where she assisted in the formulation of high-tech venture capital projects across China, Israel, and the United States. Chen also provided early support for the Shanghai office and operation facilities of leading Chinese Internet company Sohu.com and assisted U.S. Johnson Engineering, Inc. in its contract to develop the Shanghai Science Museum's earth and space exhibits. Chen, together with a Professor Wang, administered the CIO Internet Training Institute, a non-profit partnership sponsored by Harrison Enterprises and The Shanghai Municipal Informatization Office to train government, public and private sector CIOs on practical uses of the Internet. Chen also served as general manager and vice president of business development for Applied Theory Corp., where she managed the company's Chinese Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise (WOFE), prior to its IPO.

"The IT infrastructure outsourcing capabilities are vast in China and are a major part of our business strategy with the new office," said Chen. "We are able to speed up software development and make it more cost-effective, allowing the company further agility. This office will serve a major world market with localized solutions and provide the high level of customer service that NetManage is known for throughout the rest of the world."

The NetManage suite of software solutions allows organizations to leverage existing investments by quickly accessing and integrating legacy mainframe-based systems into modern IT investments. The China-based solution delivery will include sales of RUMBA, which provides the ability to increase user productivity and reduce total cost of ownership with multi-host access for the evolving enterprise. RUMBA enables business users to perform tasks in a friendly Windows environment when accessing information from a broad range of host systems, including IBM mainframe, IBM iSeries (AS/400), Hewlett-Packard, UNIX and VAX.

NetManage will also offer the OnWeb product family, a server-based software solution that enables the development and deployment of new business services by integrating existing enterprise information systems and transforming them into Web services with security, speed and customization. These phased NetManage software solutions will greatly reduce the challenges and efforts of delivering solutions on legacy assets, further ensuring rapid deployment and adoption by user and developer.

About NetManage

NetManage, Inc. (NASDAQ: NETM) is a software company that provides a fast way to transform legacy applications into new Web-based business solutions. More than 10,000 customers worldwide, including a majority of the Fortune 500, have chosen NetManage for mission critical application integration. For more information, visit http://www.netmanage.com.