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Single Architecture For Web Services, Events and SQL Dramatically Reduces Complexity and Expense of Integrating Mainframe into SOAs and Event-Driven Architectures NEON(R) Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:NEON), The Mainframe Integration Experts(TM), today unveiled the industry's first Mainframe Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) "On-Ramp" for mainframe integration, Shadow RTE(TM), a robust technical architecture and consolidated development environment to enable customers to integrate mission critical mainframe resources into a Real-Time Enterprise. Shadow RTE is based on a deeply integrated software architecture, created from the best of NEON's proven Shadow codebase and the technology assets acquired from Clientsoft and InnerAccess Technologies during 2004. Behind the scenes of most large scale, global enterprises today are hundreds -- if not thousands -- of integration point-to-point connections, each with its own attendant hardware, software and personnel adding layers of inefficiencies and costs. Shadow RTE is a distinct departure from point integration solutions, offering instead a Mainframe Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) "On-Ramp" supporting Web services, real-time events and SQL access for seamless interoperability between mainframe and distributed systems. For organizations with significant investments in mainframe systems, Shadow RTE functionality translates into faster development and deployment of new, high value applications, streamlined business processes and real-time access to enterprise data and logic regardless of where it resides within the enterprise. "Integration is a huge problem for today's businesses, whilst offering the greatest opportunity for dramatic increases in productivity," said Mark Cresswell, President and CEO of NEON Systems. "Shadow RTE is profoundly different from traditionally mainframe point integration products that exponentially add to the complexity of the underlying IT infrastructure. The future of mainframe integration is more about reducing complexity through standards-based SOA and leveraging the power of real-time, bi-directional business events. Shadow RTE delivers in a single, elegant architecture what large organizations need to fully realize the concept of business agility," added Cresswell. Shadow RTE deploys natively on the IBM z/Series mainframe and serves as a foundation for NEON's industry leading mainframe integration products: Shadow z/Services supporting Web services for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA); Shadow z/Events leveraging real-time events for Event-Driven Architectures (EDA); Shadow z/Direct supporting SQL for direct data access and transactional support; Shadow z/Components supporting Java Beans, C# and VB.NET components for tightly coupled integration, as well as Shadow z/Presentation supporting automatic presentation layer generation for extending screen-based applications to the Web. Industry Recognition NEON Systems' Shadow RTE was recently evaluated by the leading IT industry research firms Gartner and Forrester. NEON Systems and its Shadow RTE mainframe integration technology is positioned in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner's Programmatic Integration Servers Magic Quadrant, published February 25, 2005. In a recently published Forrester Research report titled "NEON Systems Scores Big By Acquiring ClientSoft," January 28, 2005, analyst Phil Murphy provided an assessment of NEON's Shadow RTE and its impact on the mainframe integration market: "NEON stands poised to be the de facto choice for companies looking to extend the life of their legacy applications. ShadowRTE lets clients use their choice of IDE to extend legacy transactions as services -- delivering business value today, while leaving a migrate-while-you-operate option open for tomorrow. NEON's approach holds the promise of significant breakthroughs in speed and ease of use that neither Web-service-to-host competitors nor pure enterprise application integration (EAI) vendors can match." (Note: To download a complimentary copy of the Gartner 2005 Programmatic Integration Server Magic Quadrant and Forrester Quick Take: "NEON Systems Scores Big By Acquiring ClientSoft," visit http://www.neonsys.com/) Partner Recognition In a joint announcement issued today, webMethods Inc. (Nasdaq: WEBM), a leading business integration and optimization software company, and NEON Systems announced a new reseller agreement and strategic partnership that allows webMethods to extend the webMethods Fabric product suite with NEON's Shadow RTE mainframe integration technology. "NEON Systems is widely recognized as a leader in mainframe integration and with the introduction of Shadow RTE, has delivered a comprehensive solution for both legacy information and functionality to be more easily and fully integrated as Web services within everyday workflows and business processes," said Kristin Weller Muhlner, Executive Vice President, Product Development, webMethods Inc. "Through the use of webMethods Fabric to leverage these resources, in conjunction with Shadow RTE, enterprises can now more readily and easily incorporate their most critical business resources as Web services within service-oriented architectures," added Muhlner. Key New Features: In addition to the unified approach to SOA and EDA, the new Shadow RTE mainframe integration platform includes a number of key new features to increase developer productivity, optimize performance and enhance manageability. -- Shadow Instrumentation Server (SIS) - maintains a fully integrated, comprehensive real-time, end-to-end systems management environment for all mainframe integration scenarios. Activity is traced and integrated from all mainframe nodes within a Sysplex and exposed graphically via the Shadow Studio. Such information is ideally suited for development productivity, operational support and corporate compliance -- Security Optimization & Management (SOM) - virtually eliminates the overhead of authenticating loosely-coupled connections making Web services on the mainframe viable from a CPU consumption perspective -- Shadow Enterprise Messaging (SEM) - advanced support for WebSphere/MQ. SEM enables WebSphere/MQ to be more easily used in support of such contemporary requirements as Web Services and asynchronous transactions. With SEM as a part of Shadow RTE, it is now possible to enable any mainframe application to exposed as a Web Service and invoked in an asynchronous, transactional, reliable and recoverable manner from WebSphere/MQ connected systems -- Complex Event Processing (CEP) - ability to logically evaluate multiple events to enable decoupled, parallel, asynchronous application processing in support of real-time business decision making Consolidated Development Studio/IDE Complementing Shadow RTE is NEON's Shadow Studio, a graphical interface tool and comprehensive IDE built on the Eclipse framework. Shadow Studio provides seamless integration within the IDE to expose mainframe applications and data as Web services, real-time business events or as direct SQL calls. This allows one development environment to handle any integration requirement without requiring detailed knowledge of the mainframe or distributed technologies. For enterprises with an investment in Microsoft Visual Studio talent, Shadow Developer is a robust legacy integration development environment for Shadow z/Services that is seamlessly integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. It allows for the automatic generation of Web services, components (COBOL, C#, VB.NET and JavaBean) and starter programs to expose both screen-based and direct mainframe applications from inside the familiar Visual Studio .NET interface. Pricing and Availability Shadow RTE is generally available as of August 8, 2005, through NEON's direct sales organization and worldwide network of distributors and resellers. Existing Shadow customers on maintenance have the option to upgrade to the Shadow RTE platform and take advantage of its significant performance and systems management enhancements at no charge. Shadow RTE provides the best technology for mainframe integration at a competitive price. For additional information on Shadow RTE or any of the complementary components, visit the NEON Website at http://www.neonsys.com/shadow/shadow_rte.asp. To speak with a sales person about Shadow RTE, call (800) 505-6366 in the United States or +44 (0)1753.752800 in the United Kingdom. To locate a NEON worldwide distributor, visit http://www.neonsys.com/partners/distributors.asp. Informational Webinar An informational web seminar is available to interested parties who would like to know more about NEON's Shadow RTE product offering entitled, "Avoid Integration Gridlock: Take The New Enterprise Service Bus 'On-Ramp' For The Mainframe -- Shadow RTE," scheduled for August 23, 2005, at 10:00 a.m. CDT. Register via the web at http://neonsys.com/response/form.aspx?id=949 About NEON Systems NEON Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:NEON) -- the Mainframe Integration Experts -- is a leading provider of enterprise-class mainframe integration solutions, delivering the only unified mainframe integration platform to support the entire range of requirements for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Event-Driven Architectures (EDA) -- key requirements to underpin the Real-time Enterprise. NEON's Shadow technology is designed to reduce the complexity of mainframe integration allowing large organizations with significant commitment to mainframe systems to streamline incumbent technologies and lower total cost of ownership. NEON's Shadow z/Services and Shadow z/Events offerings attack the emerging mainframe Web services and real-time mainframe event-driven markets and are unique in their depth and breadth of support for the requirements of such markets. With extensive mainframe integration expertise, NEON is uniquely qualified to solve the complexities of supporting new business initiatives that must integrate with critical mainframe systems. For more information on the Powering the Real-time Enterprise, see our Web site at http://www.neonsys.com or call 800-505-NEON. The NEON logo, Shadow, Shadow Web Server and Shadow Direct are registered trademarks, and Shadow z/Services, Shadow z/Events, and Shadow Studio are trademarks of NEON Systems, Inc. in the USA and in other select countries. All other trademarks, service marks and product or service names are the property of their respective owners.