SOA in the Cloud on Ulitzer

Progress DataDirect, the data-infrastructure division of Progress Software Corporation, has announced it has entered into a strategic partnership with Mainline Information Systems, Inc., a provider of IBM servers, storage and software solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Mainline will offer the industry-leading mainframe integration middleware, Progress DataDirect Shadow to its customers looking for cost-effective mainframe modernization through SOA enablement and legacy-data integration.

The DataDirect Shadow product is a single, unified platform built exclusively for integration with IBM System z mainframes. The high-performance foundation architecture supports all major industry-standard requirements for integrating mainframe data, business logic, and screens with SOAs and composite application development initiatives. The DataDirect Shadow platform uses patent-pending technology to expand the utilization of the IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) specialty engine to additional workloads beyond DB2, including the non-relational mainframe databases Adabas, IMS/DB, IDMS and VSAM, as well SOAP/XML parsing necessary for creating Web services within the mainframe to applications residing within CICS, IMS/TM, IDMS and Natural.

Since its founding in 1989, Mainline has experienced outstanding growth by providing solid technology solutions and high levels of service to its customers. By offering the DataDirect Shadow platform, Mainline expands its offerings to continue to meet the infrastructure, environment and business needs of its customers while helping keep technology budgets in-check. Internal benchmark testing by Progress DataDirect has shown up to 99 percent of the processing associated with SOA integration, SQL data queries, Change Data Capture (CDC) for events and Web-enablement can be diverted from the mainframe's General Purpose Processor (GPP) to be handled by the zIIP specialty engine -- which does the work without using any of the mainframe licensed MIPs capacity. This is an attractive proposition for organizations looking to lower mainframe total-cost-of-ownership and for existing Mainline zIIP accounts who can now realize the benefit of DataDirect Shadow for data sources in addition to DB2.

"Mainline is always looking for innovative products and services that will bring value to our customers and exceed their business and IT requirements," said Doug Harrell, vice president of System z sales at Mainline Information Systems. "The DataDirect Shadow platform's unique zIIP exploitation capabilities, standardized data access and depth of mainframe environment support will help our customers reduce the cost and complexity of legacy data integration and make the mainframe a first-class participant in enterprise-class initiatives like SOA, BI, MDM or ERP."

Technological advancements like SOAs, Web services, ANSI-92 SQL and XML Events address many of the challenges of mainframe integration, but cost still remains a primary concern. Progress DataDirect brings to the Mainline professional services portfolio the Shadow Mainframe TCO Calculator for measuring the impact of Web services, SOA and SQL data processing on mainframe MIPS capacity and the benefit of zIIP offload. The calculator joins Mainline's CP 3000 studies for capacity planning to offer clients highly effective tools for weighing the risks of deferring a hardware upgrade or extending the value of the mainframe to new workloads through zIIP exploitation. These tools will also help organizations ease the software and hardware procurement process by providing real-time ROI analysis and strategic support for improving control over mainframe cost-of-ownership.