FirstMerit Enhances Customer Web Banking Experience Through Service-Oriented Architecture Using Mainframe Integration Technology from NEON Systems

Business Wire, Oct 25, 2005

SUGAR LAND, Texas -- Shadow z/Services Distributed Speeds Deployment of Microsoft .NET Framework-Based Applications

NEON(R) Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:NEON), The Mainframe Integration Experts(TM), today announced that FirstMerit Corp. has selected NEON's mainframe integration technology Shadow z/Services Distributed and Microsoft application server technologies, including Windows Server 2003 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1, to architect innovative customer banking applications.

FirstMerit Corporation is a full service financial services company headquartered in Akron, Ohio, with assets of $10.3 billion. FirstMerit provides a complete range of banking and financial services to consumers and businesses throughout 160 branch offices in 24 Ohio and Western Pennsylvania counties.

NEON's Shadow z/Services Distributed provides an easy to deploy runtime that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and allows organizations to expose mainframe 3270 or 5250 screen based applications as XML-based Web services.

FirstMerit developed its original IT infrastructure to support online customer interaction five years ago. Customer adoption of FirstMerit's online banking services has continued to grow each year. Increased Web traffic and the desire to roll-out new services ultimately led to FirstMerit creating a more flexible solution base on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This new approach positioned FirstMerit for further growth and accelerated its ability to deploy additional innovative customer facing as well as internal banking applications.

With a business need for rapid deployment and a technical requirement to have an integration tool that connects to data and logic on legacy systems, FirstMerit selected NEON's Shadow z/Services Distributed for its innovative distributed runtime option, based upon the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1. Shadow z/Services Distributed provides seamless interoperability and withstands heavy traffic loads, while offering a flexible architecture to address future needs.

Shadow z/Services Distributed provides seamless interoperability between FirstMerit's VSAM databases residing on IBM System 390 mainframes and its distributed Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 applications running on Microsoft Windows Server 2000 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. NEON's Shadow Developer is fully integrated with Visual Studio .NET 2003 which enabled FirstMerit's .NET Framework-based developers to quickly map and record the 3270 mainframe screen transactions and expose them as Web services to the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 application being developed to support the new Internet banking solution.

"NEON's intuitive interface had our developers up and running quickly with minimal backend prep," said Jim Giarrano, vice president in charge of client server development at FirstMerit. "NEON's Shadow z/Services Distributed software plugged directly into the .NET environment we were building and resulted in near instantaneous Website access time. The benefits from this implementation can be summed up in two ways - first, we have seen a direct correlation between the installation of the NEON product and the increased number of customers registering for our service and accessing our site, secondly, and more important to us, is the dramatic improvement to customer Web experience due to improved availability and significantly faster response times," added Giarrano.

After the implementation of the new Web banking system using the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and NEON's Shadow/z Services Distributed customers now gain access to their accounts in milliseconds and experience a very stable Web environment, and as a side benefit to FirstMerit the new system requires less tech support to maintain. FirstMerit customers can now access account information and handle transactions including monetary transfers. NEON's Shadow z/Services Distributed also provides feature rich access for internal applications giving staff increased access to customer records.

NEON's Shadow z/Services Distributed provides tn3270 or tn5250 API access to both mainframe and iSeries screen applications. Shadow z/Services Distributed also offers an efficient, low-risk and cost-effective method for screen-based host access, as well as allowing use of the Shadow Developer to expose screen-based mainframe and iSeries application logic as XML-based Web services.

"Microsoft is pleased to see FirstMerit adopt NEON's Shadow z/Services Distributed to connect its mainframe with modern applications based on the .NET Framework 1.1," said Dino Chiesa, product manager of the .NET Developer Product Management Group at Microsoft Corp. "NEON's integration tool allows FirstMerit developers to take advantage of the productivity benefits of developing with the .NET Framework 1.1, without changing the existing mainframe-based application and data stores. The FirstMerit project demonstrates the clear benefits of this combination."

"Web services and SOA are providing the business agility that organizations need to address new opportunities. The popularity and capability of the .NET Framework 1.1 has created a market need for connecting legacy systems to .NET Framework-based applications," said Mark Cresswell, president and CEO of NEON Systems. "Our mainframe integration technology is the leading industry solution for providing a clear channel between .NET Framework-based applications and legacy platforms while creating minimal down time for installation. FirstMerit is a good example of the rapid return on investment available when two industry leading technologies come together quickly to solve an immediate business need," added Cresswell.