Fresche Nabs Redbourn Business Systems For Synon Expertise

November 11, 2024 Alex Woodie

Fresche Solutions last week acquired Redbourn Business Systems, a UK-based provider of Synon and CA 2E development and consulting services. The move bolsters Fresche’s previous efforts to cater to the needs of IBM i shops that adopted the Synon/2E development language, and also bolsters the company’s European presence.

Redbourn Business Systems was founded in 1994 by Steve Cast, a longtime RPG programmer and IBM midrange professional who was among the first to port applications from the System/38 to the AS/400 back in the 1980s. The company, which is based in the English village of Redbourn, provides a range of services for IBM i, including development services for RPG, COBOL, .NET, and Web services, but its specialty is CA 2E.

CA 2E, of course, is the current name of the fourth generation language (4GL) originally created by Simon William’s company, Synon, back in 1986 to accelerate application development on the System/38, and two years later, on the AS/400. Originally called Synon/2E, the 4GL was widely adopted by System/38 and AS/400 shops around the world, and it garnered Synon $79 million of revenue by 1997 and a customer base north of 6,000.

After Williams sold Synon to Sterling Software in 1998 for $79 million, the 4GL, which generated RPG and COBOL application code (as well as DDS and SQL for the database) went through a series of acquisitions and name changes. Sterling sold it as COOL:2E until 2000, when Computer Associates bought Sterling for $3.9 billion and changed the name to CA 2E. After renaming the product AllFusion 2E, CA Technologies went back to the original CA 2E name in 2007 with the introduction of version 8.1 SP2. When its current owner Broadcom acquired CA back in 2018 for $19 billion, Broadcom decided to keep the name CA 2E.

While Broadcom continues to support CA 2E and a related tool called CA Plex (originally Obsydian) that extends greenscreen CA 2E applications to Windows and graphical interfaces, it doesn’t appear that it’s investing large sums on new development in the products. The company’s CA 2E data sheet hasn’t been updated in over a decade, since the release of CA 2E version 8.6. Broadcom shipped 8.7.1 in 2019 soon after acquiring CA, and the latest version is 8.7.4, according to Broadcom documentation.

Just the same, CA 2E and CA Plex activity has not completely stopped. While CA 2E skills are getting more difficult to find, CA 2E applications are still being maintained, and there are even new IBM i applications being developed using the tools, including by service firms like Redbourn.

Redbourn has built a business that caters to the needs of CA 2E customers, including development, maintenance, support, and training. The company is recognized by the global CA 2E community as experts in the environment, and its employees have spoken at CA 2E international conferences. Cast, who was the managing director of Redbourn, previously chaired the UK CA 2E User Group and remains active in the community.

Steve Cast is the owner, founder, and managing director of Redbourn Business Systems.

Fresche Solutions has also been active in the CA 2E community, specifically when it comes to helping CA 2E customers move away from the technology and toward more modern languages, such as Java.

“A dwindling pool of Synon developers, brittle applications that are difficult to integrate with modern technologies, and cryptic database structures further add pressures to Synon shops,” wrote Fresche’s senior vice president of strategic transformation Chris Koppe in a July 2024 IT Jungle column. “The journey from legacy Synon applications to modern Java solutions is complex, but with strategic planning and the right partner, it can lead to numerous business benefits.”

Fresche is bullish on its automated code conversion capabilities, and has been actively courting CA 2E customers to capability to automate much of the migration from CA 2E as possible. The acquisition of Redbourn clearly will bolster this line of business for Fresche, and give it even more credibility as it tries to win CA 2E modernization projects.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Redbourn team to Fresche,” chief executive officer Joe Zarrehparvar said in a statement. “The combined expertise of our teams further strengthens our commitment to provide exceptional support to the IBM i community. With Redbourn’s deep knowledge in Synon/CA 2E and a shared passion for innovation, we are well-positioned to address the evolving needs of our clients and partners worldwide. This acquisition marks a significant milestone in Fresche’s mission as the leading modernization and transformation partner for IBM i organizations.”

The acquisition provides a fresh start for Cast, who is also active with IBM i user groups in Europe, including with i-UG, where he is the marketing director, and COMMON Europe, where is a director and its treasurer.

“This partnership is the perfect fit for Redbourn, our employees, and our customers,” Cast said in a press release. “Fresche’s strong commitment to IBM i solutions and unmatched expertise in modernization give our clients additional options to grow and transform their operations. By joining Fresche, we can deliver an even higher level of support for modernization and application and cloud services. I am excited to embark on this new journey and join Fresche’s mission to lead modernization and transformation for IBM i organizations.”

The Redbourn headquarters will become another European office for Fresche, which calls itself a global remote company that has other offices in Quebec, North Carolina, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia. It’s unclear how many employees Redbourn has, but its listing on LinkedIn shows it having between 11 and 50 employees.

In addition to its CA 2E business, Redbourn offers a variety of services, including development in multiple languages, data migration, training, and running and managing third-party products. The company is also a reseller for two Fresche products, including Presto, it tactical modernization tool for IBM i applications, and X-Analysis View, a cross referencing tool for IBM i. It also had agreements in place to resell CONTROL for i, a system monitoring tool from the UK-based software company M81, as well as for iAMS:Server.

Fresche did not share terms of acquisition, which was funded by its owner, the private equity firm American Pacific Group (APG). Fraser Preston, the managing partner and founder of APG, which acquired a controlling stake in the firm back in 2020, said the acquisition reinforces the company’s strategy to bolster Fresche’s global footprint and expand its capabilities to serve the IBM i market better.

“The transaction offers substantial momentum and synergies, strengthening our commitment to invest in IBM i modernization capabilities that enhance Fresche’s solutions to provide a competitive edge,” Preston stated in a press release.

Redbourn is the latest in a string of acquisitions for Fresche in recent years, including Silveredge Consulting in 2023, Trinity Guard in 2022, and Abacus in 2021. Back in 2016, it acquired Quadrant, which had already gobbled up BCD Software, and in 2014 it bought looksoftware, providing the core of its IBM i modernization tool suite. It kicked off bought X-Analysis maker Databorough in 2013, one year after changing its name from Speedware to Fresche Legacy and acquiring Sykora.

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