DataDirect Technologies Shadow z/Services Accelerates Mainframe SOA Deployment for National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

Business Wire, June 26, 2006

BEDFORD, Mass. -- DataDirect(R) Shadow z/Services(TM) Streamlines Integration, Enables Improved Customer Service

DataDirect Technologies, the unparalleled leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), today announced that the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) has deployed DataDirect(R) Shadow z/Services(TM) to streamline the integration of its online customer transactions directly with mainframe data in an effort to improve service levels and the reusability of existing mainframe system resources.

Established in 1942, the NRECA offers employee benefit plans including health and welfare, 401(K) and traditional pension plans to more than 900 cooperative electric utilities nationwide. Prior to the advent of the Internet, benefit transactions were sent via the mail and entered manually into the benefits administration system using CA-Datacom(R) database on its IBM zSeries mainframe. Faced with increased demand for an online solution to submit, monitor and manage benefits transactions, the NRECA built and launched a customer-friendly Web site in 1997.

Today, the NRECA Web site currently hosts 13 benefits-related applications, ranging from registering new hires and terminations to employee disabilities. While the front-end system has significantly improved customer service and operational efficiency, the back-end system remained static, unable to scale with ease or evolve to meet changing business conditions. Recognizing that greater efficiencies and faster service could be achieved by updating the IT infrastructure to support a more flexible, service-oriented architecture (SOA), the NRECA selected DataDirect Shadow z/Services technology for mainframe integration.

Shadow z/Services utilizes the Shadow RTE(TM) foundation architecture, a robust, multi-threaded, native runtime that supports all of the major mainframe integration paradigms - Web services for SOA; real-time events for Event-Driven Architectures (EDA); SQL for direct SQL data access and transactional support; as well as automatic presentation-layer generation for extending screen-based applications to the Web.

"With the majority of our business and customer transactions taking place via the Web, we needed to update our back-end system to speed transaction processing," said Linda Scotto, manager of applications development and support in the NRECA IT department. "Shadow z/Services made creating a Web service from a mainframe screen simple, allowing us to more easily add new features to our Web site. With a faster, more efficient development environment we are able to make better use of our existing mainframe resources for improved operational efficiency and cost savings."

Implementing Shadow z/Services in tandem with Microsoft BizTalk servers and SharePoint portal technologies, the NRECA's updated IT infrastructure is better equipped to satisfy transaction processing requests now and in the future. With SOA, NRECA can leverage existing data and application assets by provisioning them as shareable services across the distributed-computing environment. When customers enter information online, that data is stored in a SQL server database and appropriately distributed by BizTalk to the correct end-point. If the transaction requires human intervention it is sent directly to a Windows SharePoint portal using Microsoft's InfoPath. In most cases however, data is immediately sent to the mainframe for processing due to the Shadow z/Services product's complete support for interacting with mainframe data as a Web service. With a flexible infrastructure now in place, the NRECA automates more than 80 percent of its benefits-transactions on the Web.

"Bottom line, we were able to extend the value of our mainframe investment using Shadow z/Services and created a more flexible, service-enabled solution for re-using 3720 screen-based applications," continued Scotto. "Service clerks now spend less time in front of a green screen and more time responding to customer inquiries."

"Customers turn to us for technologies that enable them to leverage existing assets to increase their business effectiveness," said John Goodson, vice president of product operations at DataDirect Technologies. "Our Shadow RTE mainframe integration platform utilizing Shadow z/Services has enabled the NRECA to rapidly transform its aging legacy infrastructure into a more flexible, Web-services application that better addresses its customer's needs."

About the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) is the national service organization dedicated to representing the national interests of cooperative electric utilities and the consumers they serve. The NRECA Board of Directors oversees the association's activities and consists of 47 members, one from each state in which there is an electric distribution cooperative. Founded in 1942, NRECA was organized specifically to overcome World War II shortages of electric construction materials, to obtain insurance coverage for newly constructed rural electric cooperatives, and to mitigate wholesale power problems. Since those early days, NRECA has been an advocate for consumer-owned cooperatives on energy and operational issues as well as rural community and economic development. NRECA's more than 900 member cooperatives serve 39 million people in 47 states. Most of the 864 distribution systems are consumer-owned cooperatives; some are public power districts.