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Getting the Most from System Z

Part I: Redefining Mainframe Economics with the Specialty Engines
November 2008

By Jeff Goldberg, Celent Senior Analyst

With the market crisis, increasing efficiencies and reducing cost are greater issues than ever. Insurance CIOs may decide that expensive technology investments may need to wait, such as that long-planned and long-delayed policy admin replacement project, and will be looking for ways to continue modernizing without the cost.

Learn how the mainframe can be modern and cost-efficient while still providing reliability with the System z specialty engines.

DataDirect Shadow - version 7.1.2 Web Services Performance Analysis

The performance analysis of DataDirect Shadow z/Services v7.1.2 (Shadow z/Services v7) was conducted at the DataDirect Technologies mainframe products development lab in Sugar Land, Texas. Testing was performed in a controlled environment using Shadow z/Services v6.1 and v7.1.2.

Bloor In-Detail Report - DataDirect Shadow v7

By incorporating Shadow into their solutions, ISVs can expand their potential market by including initial or expanded access to mainframe assets as well as enhance their solution TCO by leveraging the most cost effective mainframe integration product on the market.

Nucleus ROI Case Study: DataDirect Shadow in Financial Services Firm

A global financial services firm deployed DataDirect Shadow and its mainframe Web services technology at the early stages of its service-oriented architecture (SOA) adoption. This strategy enabled the company to leverage existing mainframe assets while increasing developer productivity and the ability to deliver new applications to customers.

ROI: 150%
Payback: 11 months

Mainframe SOA Research Report from The Clipper Group

In this report, Clipper Group analyst Anne MacFarland recommends using DataDirect Shadow v7 to make using IBM’s System z9 for SOA less expensive. With the release of DataDirect Shadow version 7, you can offload data traffic (including SOA messaging) to System z9’s zIIP processor and application traffic (including SOA orchestration) to a z9 zAAP processor. By offloading work to these specialty engines, the work gets done faster and is charged according to a less escalating pricing model. The report also details other significant capabilities added in version 7 such as adding DataDirect Connect database driver technology, and more.

Mainframe TCO Research Report from the 451Group

In this report, industry analyst John Abbott from The 451 Group gives his take on version 7 of the DataDirect Shadow mainframe integration platform, which allows customers to take better advantage of IBM’s System z mainframe specialty engines (zIIP and zAAP). The result is higher performance and lower costs and an easier means of turning the mainframe into an active participant in SOA application deployments.

ZapThink: The Mainframe as a First Class SOA Participant
Mainframe Integration

In this whitepaper, ZapThink research analyst Jason Bloomberg explores the challenges customers face when attempting to integrate their legacy systems with new technologies and architectures, and the issues associated with traditional mainframe integration methods. He guides the reader to a better understanding and approach that involves a single mainframe architecture for reduced complexity, cost and risk.

Reducing the Complexity of Mainframe Integration: Through a Single Unified Platform for Mainframe Integration
Mainframe Integration

For organizations with significant investments in mainframe systems, Shadow dramatically reduces the cost and complexity associated with mainframe integration. A single unified platform for mainframe integration 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.

Gartner Research Report: DataDirect Offering Suggests a Future for IBM Specialty Engines

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