Global Customers Embracing DataDirect Partnership

Customers Exploiting Seamless Integration Between webMethods Fabric and DataDirect Shadow RTE to Improve Cross-Enterprise Process Integration

DataDirect Technologies, the unparalleled leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration, and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), and webMethods, Inc., a leading business integration and optimization software company, today highlighted continued momentum for their strategic partnership with joint customer engagements spanning the globe.

Based on the strategic partnership and reseller agreement first announced in August 2005, webMethods is offering DataDirect's Shadow RTE mainframe integration technology as a fully-supported component of its industry-leading product suite for business process integration, webMethods Fabric(TM). This joint offering works to ensure that mainframe systems and data sources are fully incorporated into the comprehensive service-oriented architecture (SOA) facilitated by webMethods Fabric. As a result, enterprises can more readily manage, monitor and improve critical business processes spanning both mainframe and distributed computing environments.

Global customers benefiting from the DataDirect/webMethods partnership include:

- Winterthur U.S. Holdings, Inc.- a super-regional property and
casualty insurance provider operating under the brands General
Casualty and Unigard

- Spoornet - the largest provider of rail freight and rail
operator in South Africa

- New South Wales Police - Australia's oldest and largest police
organization

"Mainframe applications are key components of many enterprise's most critical business processes. What DataDirect's Shadow RTE offers our customers is a more reliable, scalable and secure means for capitalizing on this core functionality within a service-oriented architecture," said Arnold Huffman, senior vice president for Business Development and Industry Solutions, webMethods, Inc. "By employing this technology as a component of our webMethods Fabric product suite, enterprises can embrace a 'leave and layer' strategy to control legacy investments while improving the agility and responsiveness of IT systems. This should be welcome news for CIOs confronted with the continuing need to do more with less."

"The growing adoption of service-oriented architecture is extending the viability of the mainframe," said John Goodson, DataDirect's vice president of Product Operations and Marketing. "With our partnership, enterprises can implement our industry-leading technology as an on-ramp to the webMethods' platform for their mainframe systems. By doing so, they're able to take advantage of the unprecedented visibility and control offered by webMethods Fabric so that they can leverage these assets in a variety of new and value-added ways."

As the only mainframe integration technology currently offered by webMethods, DataDirect's Shadow RTE is being supported as an upgrade for current users of the webMethods Mainframe Integration Server (MIS) that need to employ a common runtime instance. Alternatively, webMethods is offering current MIS users seeking to maintain their distributed environment the opportunity to extend current support beyond March 31, 2007.

By Progress Software