Progress DataDirect, the data-infrastructure division of Progress Software Corporation, has entered into a strategic partnership with Mainline Information Systems, Inc., a provider of IBM servers, storage and software solutions, to offer mainframe data integration solutions.
"Mainline now has the ability to resell the Shadow products from the DataDirect division of Progress software as well as our services and delivery capabilities," Hugh Raiford, director of business development at Progress DataDirect, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Mainline is one of the top IBM business partners with regard to reselling IBM hardware and software so they have a very large customer base of IBM mainframe sites. We believe their customers can derive value as it relates to using Shadow as a solution for integrating their mainframe assets."
DataDirect Shadow is a unified platform built for integration with IBM System z mainframes. The foundation architecture supports major requirements for integrating mainframe data, business logic, and screens with SOA and composite application development initiatives. The DataDirect Shadow platform uses patent-pending technology to expand the utilization of the IBM System z 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.
According to the vendors, technological advancements such as SOA, Web services, ANSI-92 SQL and XML events address many of the challenges of mainframe integration, but cost still remains a primary concern. The addition of Progress DataDirect brings 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-to the Mainline professional services portfolio. The calculator joins Mainline's CP 3000 studies for capacity planning to offer clients tools for weighing the risks of deferring a hardware upgrade or extending the value of the mainframe to new workloads through zIIP exploitation. The vendors expect that 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.
Partnering with Mainline Information Systems builds on Progress DataDirect's history with OEM partnerships and supports the DataDirect Shadow channel strategy by expanding the opportunities within the System z community, says Raiford. "DataDirect has a long history of using OEM as a channel for our products to be taken to market. Adding value added resellers like Mainline simply brings a broader opportunity to more end users to be able to procure our software."
For more about Mainline, go here. For more about Progress DataDirect, go here.