NEON Systems Announces Complementary Support for IBM CICS Transaction Server V3.1 to Speed Mainframe SOA Deployments with Web Services

Business Wire, June 27, 2005

SUGAR LAND, Texas & ORLANDO, Fla. -- NEON(R) Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:NEON), The Mainframe Integration Experts, announced today at IBM's Transaction and Messaging Conference, the availability of complementary and enhanced support for IBM's new CICS(TM) Transaction Server Version 3.1 (CICS TS V3.1) through NEON's industry leading mainframe Web services solution, Shadow z/Services(TM) -- a component of the Shadow(R) RTE mainframe integration suite. With its ability to support both Web services and real-time mainframe event integration, Shadow RTE can simplify the deployment of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) for organizations that rely on CICS to run their mission critical business services. NEON Systems has been an IBM Business Partner and supported the CICS platform for more than 10 years, focusing on extending usability and accelerating return on business value.

"For large organizations that rely on mainframe systems there is tremendous value to be gained using Web services to extend their current investments in CICS applications to Service Oriented Architectures," said Chris Garner, NEON Systems' Senior Vice President of Products Group. "Inherent to the design of Shadow RTE is technology that never puts at risk mainframe quality of service when integrating CICS transactions. In fact, the enhancements we have built in for CICS Transaction Server Version 3.1 successfully couple ease of integration and application transformation with optimized performance and systems management," added Garner.

NEON's Shadow RTE extends and capitalizes on the powerful new features of IBM's CICS TS 3.1, while still providing customers with the added benefit of Shadow's ease of development, implementation and operation. With this announcement, customers can take advantage of the new features found in CICS TS V3.1, and eliminate many of the complexities associated with Web services enablement of legacy applications.

The latest version of Shadow RTE includes support for:

--Increased HTTP interoperability - support for HTTP 1.1 which enables CICS to act as both an HTTP server as well as a HTTP client when using EXEC CICS commands

--Optimized performance - support for asynchronous sockets which greatly enhances the performances of the runtime under heavy load

--Support for URIMap to allow indirection and flexibility in URL assignments

--Support for UTF8-UTF16 conversion to z/OS code pages

--Support for CHANNEL/CONTAINERS as an alternative to regular COMMAREAs (Screen logic integration programs will be able to benefit from CONTAINERS when large volumes of data are extracted from lengthy pagination processes.)

--Capability to link to CHANNEL/CONTAINERS CICS program

--Support more flexible CICS Pipelines to provide a "terminal handler" as a replacement for the SOAP for CICS support introduced in previous versions of CICS

--Direct support for WSBIND structures (LS2WS) for screen logic integration

--Developer Studio/IDE - Shadow z/Studio will enable rapid development and testing of the Web services and other middleware components within the CICS TS V3.1 environment. The Shadow Studio is an IDE that works with both IBM Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET environments.

NEON Statement of Direction:

--Shadow z/Services WsC (Web services Consumption) will be extended to use the PIPELINES and CHANNEL/CONTAINERS options allowing CICS programs to pass large amounts of data to remote Web Services via high-level APIs (EC WEB SEND)

NEON Systems' mainframe integration technology, Shadow RTE, is the leading technology for mainframe integration and has recently been evaluated by the IT industry research firms Gartner and Forrester(1). Shadow RTE mainframe integration technology underpins the mission critical integration of more than 500 of the world's largest enterprises. IBM WebSphere(R) Business Integration Mainframe Adapters(2) leverages Shadow RTE technology for direct access to mainframe data and applications.

About Shadow RTE

NEON's Shadow RTE technology provides a robust technical architecture to support the broad range of customer requirements for mainframe integration. Shadow RTE is the foundation upon which customers can integrate mission critical mainframe resources into a Real-time Enterprise. A single unified platform, Shadow RTE enables real-time mainframe integration with industry standard application development platforms - .NET and/or J2EE - in support of Web services for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), real-time events for Event-Driven Architectures (EDA), SQL for direct data access and transactional (XA) support, and Presentation integration for Web-enablement of legacy screen-based applications and data. Shadow RTE provides the auditing, tracing and logging layer required to meet new compliance reporting. With Shadow RTE, customers have a mainframe integration infrastructure that at its lower levels is designed and proven to be secure, scalable, high performance, reliable and manageable.

About NEON Systems

NEON Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:NEON) -- the Mainframe Integration Experts -- is a leading provider of enterprise-class mainframe integration solutions, delivering the only unified mainframe integration platform to support the entire range of requirements for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Event-Driven Architectures (EDA) -- key requirements to underpin the Real-time Enterprise. NEON's Shadow technology is designed to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration allowing large organizations with significant commitment to mainframe systems to streamline incumbent technologies and lower total cost of ownership. NEON's Shadow z/Services and Shadow z/Events offerings attack the emerging mainframe Web services and real-time mainframe event-driven markets and are unique in their depth and breadth of support for the requirements of such markets. With extensive mainframe integration expertise, NEON is uniquely qualified to solve the complexities of supporting new business initiatives that must integrate with critical mainframe systems. For more information on the Powering the Real-time Enterprise, see our website at http://www.neonsys.com or call 800-505-NEON.