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BEDFORD,
Mass., Sep 25, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- DataDirect Technologies,
the unparalleled leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration
and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq:
PRGS), today announced the proliferation of advanced service-oriented
architecture (SOA) deployments by a number of Shadow(R) RTE customers
and mainframe users.
Sometimes
referred to as SOA 2.0, advanced SOA entails the merging of SOA
and Web services interoperability with other architectural types,
most notably event-driven architectures (EDA). Moving beyond Web
services to include event notifications and enterprise-class computing
environments, users experience a more agile and responsive IT infrastructure
capable of achieving what Gartner, Inc. defines as the Real-Time
Enterprise - an enterprise that allows businesses to more effectively
compete by using up-to-date information to progressively remove
delays to the management and execution of its critical business
processes.
Mainframe
SOA Leader
DataDirect
Technologies is an innovator in SOA enablement for the mainframe,
providing through its Shadow RTE mainframe services bus, an integrated
software architecture supporting both Web services and real-time
events, in addition to its support for direct SQL access and Web
enablement. According to Gartner research vice president Dale Vecchio,
advanced SOA enablement involving mainframes provides customers
with an opportunity for increased business agility.
"The
addition of real-time events to a Web services based Service Oriented
Architecture, has applicability to organizations with heavy investments
in mainframe technology. Web services have already begun to accelerate
legacy re-use and re-position the mainframe as an industry standard
server. Given the transactional nature of mainframes - one that
is rich in business meaningful events - the combination of mainframe
events and mainframe Web services for advanced SOA enablement provides
the additional benefit of a real-time foundation for increased business
agility."
Gartner,
Inc., Dale Vecchio
Customers of DataDirect Technologies that are already utilizing
the combined benefits of Web services and real-time events for advanced
SOA include the 17th Circuit Court of Florida, the state's second-largest
judicial district and Kansas City Life Insurance Company, a firm
that insures more than a half-million policy holders in the United
States.
Events in Motion
The
17th Circuit Court of Florida selected the Shadow RTE product and
its Shadow z/Events(TM) component to maintain real-time data consistency
between distributed databases and mainframe systems supporting its
new judicial information system. Without touching application code,
the Shadow z/Events component provides the court with a complete
facility for merging the real-time capture and publication of changes
that occurred within the court's VSAM mainframe database to enable
secure, streamlined integration of XML-formatted legacy data with
a distributed relational data warehouse. The new real-time judicial
information system brings together advanced elements of SOA, leveraging
Web services and real-time events with modern advances in data warehousing.
"Our
goal was to create a real-time judicial (case management) information
repository with an enterprise reporting system, and a system that
would facilitate the processing of our case loads in a timely, efficient
and accurate manner," said Les E. Pearson, systems and programming
manager 17th Circuit Court, state of Florida. "We made a wise product
choice with the Shadow RTE product from DataDirect, whether in terms
of functionality or simplicity of install, the Shadow RTE product
has helped us meet our advanced SOA requirements and is a product
we can grow with."
Kansas
City Life Insurance Company uses the Shadow z/Services(TM) Web services
Consumption (WsC) component to support real-time data updates between
its mainframe system of record and distributed databases. To improve
agent productivity, the insurance carrier created a portal built
in the .NET framework that interacts with its CyberLife policy administration
package on the mainframe. With the Shadow z/Services component,
Kansas City Life Insurance Company was able to encapsulate mainframe
logic into reusable, easily deployed services for ease of integration.
The Shadow z/Services bi-directional Web services capabilities with
SQL server enables the insurance provider to quickly assimilate
new agents into the portal community for improved productivity and
service levels.
"Service-oriented
architectures are providing a way for organizations to more readily
integrate their mission-critical mainframe data and applications
into new, high-value business applications," said Chris Garner,
vice president of research and development for DataDirect Technologies'
Shadow products. "The Shadow products have been engineered to seamlessly
incorporated Web services and real-time events into a single, integration
architecture that allow customers to more rapidly deploy mainframe
assets within advanced SOA implementations."
Upcoming
Product Demonstrations Demonstrations of the Shadow RTE product
and its capabilities for supporting advanced SOA using real-time
mainframe events and Web services will be made at the Gartner Application
Development Summit Technology Expo, Phoenix, Arizona, Sept. 25-27,
in the Grand Canyon Room 6-12, booth L.
NEON
Systems Now DataDirect Technologies
NEON
Systems was acquired by Progress Software in January 2006 and is
now part of DataDirect Technologies, an operating company of Progress
Software Corporation. This acquisition of NEON Systems by DataDirect
Technologies will offer customers a single, comprehensive source
for data connectivity products and mainframe integration.
About
DataDirect Technologies
DataDirect
Technologies is the software industry's only comprehensive provider
of software for connecting the world's most critical business applications
to data and services, running on any platform, using proven and
emerging standards. Developers worldwide depend on DataDirect(R)
products to connect their applications to an unparalleled range
of data sources using standards-based interfaces such as ODBC, JDBC(TM)
and ADO.NET, XQuery and SOAP. More than 300 leading independent
software vendors and thousands of enterprises rely on DataDirect
Technologies to simplify and streamline data connectivity for distributed
systems and to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration. DataDirect
Technologies is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation
(Nasdaq: PRGS). For more information, visit www.datadirect.com.
DataDirect,
Shadow, Shadow RTE, Shadow z/Events and Shadow z/Services are trademarks
or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one
of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries.
Java and all Java based marks are trademarks or registered trademarks
of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Any other
trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective
owners.
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