DataDirect Technologies Extends its Lead in Mainframe SOA with New Standards-Based Web Services Orchestration Capabilities

Business Wire, Dec 10, 2007

DataDirect([R]) Shadow([R]) Version 7 will Include Native BPEL 2.0 Runtime and Eclipse-Based Studio with BPEL Developer; Exploitation of zIIP/ zAAP Specialty Engines Dramatically Lowers Costs and Improves Performance

BEDFORD, Mass. -- DataDirect Technologies, the unparalleled leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), today announced its industry leading mainframe integration platform, the DataDirect([R]) Shadow([R]) version 7 product will include new features which reduce total-cost-of-ownership for mainframe service-oriented architectures (SOAs) while simultaneously simplifying the orchestration of mainframe Web services. As the first full-featured mainframe integration middleware to capitalize on the potential performance and economic value of the IBM specialty engines - the System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) and System z9 Integration Information Processor (zIIP) - the DataDirect Shadow product version 7 will provide the added benefit of transferring Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) 2.0 workload to the unmeasured and speed unlimited environment of the zAAP specialty engine.

Cost-Effective, Simpler, Standards-Based Mainframe Web Services Orchestration

BPEL is an industry standard, XML-based workflow definition language that allows businesses to describe inter or intra-enterprise business processes that are connected via Web services. Version 7 of the DataDirect Shadow product will include enhancements to accelerate mainframe participation in SOA and BPEL. The Shadow BPEL designer and the zAAP supported mainframe runtime will enable organizations to orchestrate platform independent, heterogeneous Web services into long running, macro Web services that underpin business process optimization.

"One of the big issues for mainframe customers is increased software costs due to growth in MIPS consumption. If mainframe customers leverage special-purpose engines on the mainframe for processing intensive workloads, such as those that support Web services or BPEL, they are isolated from traditional software charges and these platforms will remain good investments for their users," said Dale Vecchio, Gartner research Vice President. Additional information on the benefits of mainframe specialty engines can be found in the recent Gartner, Inc. report, DataDirect Offering Suggests Future for IBM Specialty Engines by Dale Vecchio and Massimo Pezzini, Nov. 13, 2007. http://www.datadirect.com/gartner-research-report/index.ssp

The DataDirect Shadow product version 7 will utilize industry standard BPEL to provide customers with the flexibility to deploy workflows, cost effectively on the mainframe leveraging the zAAP specialty engine, or the option to deploy off host within an existing business process management (BPM) infrastructure.

"The goal of the specialty engines is to help users cost effectively expand the use of the mainframe to new workloads like BPEL 2.0 for Web services orchestration," said Florence Hudson, vice president, marketing & strategy, IBM System z. "DataDirect Technologies' unique exploitation of these engines will help IBM extend the value of the mainframe to SOAs, attracting new users, reducing total-cost-of-ownership and reinforcing the mainframe's longstanding value proposition - to make mission-critical computing safe, reliable and secure."

In a recent survey titled Mainframe SOA Trends by the publication zJournal, more than 48 percent of the people identified as integration specialists indicated their Web services strategy for the mainframe included combining or orchestrating multiple Web services into a macro Web service, while 52 percent of the respondents indicated they currently used industry standard BPEL for Web services orchestration.

The Shadow BPEL designer and BPEL runtime management interface will be contained in the Eclipse-based Shadow Studio, providing a universal view into mainframe resources and how they can be repurposed into new applications using any of the industry standard interfaces supported by the Shadow platform - whether through industry standard SQL (ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET) data access, Web services (SOAP) or real-time events (XML).

Exploiting Specialty Engines for Mainframe Integration

The DataDirect Shadow version 7 product is built on the foundation architecture of the industry's only single-unified platform for mainframe integration and will incorporate new patent-pending technology that capitalizes on the potential performance and cost advantages of the IBM System z mainframe specialty engines. With the Shadow product's advanced middleware design, SOA integration processing and data queries are diverted from the mainframe's General Purpose Processor (GPP) and redirected to the zIIP and/or zAAP specialty engines. Specialty engines are not speed governed, therefore workloads redirected to specialty engines can deliver better performance. Similarly, workloads redirected to specialty engines do not count against an organization's contracted mainframe processing capacity, which can result in significantly reduced Total-Cost-of-Ownership (TCO). In addition, with the DataDirect Shadow version 7 product, organizations wanting to integrate mainframe assets into an SOA using BPEL orchestration (via a Java Virtual Machine within the Shadow runtime) will have the ability to leverage the zAAP specialty engine to run this critical component of the integration scheme.