For current webMethods users, additional benefits of the integrated offering include:

• Extended SOA deployment -- Provides on-board, bi-directional integration between webMethods Fabric and mainframe applications via Web services, making the mainframe and distributed systems peers within a standards-based SOA infrastructure.
• Real-time integration -- Enables business events which originate within mainframe applications and data subsystems to be non-invasively published to the webMethods platform, allowing the mainframe to trigger business processes in real time and participate in complex event processing, such as the patent-pending Business Activity Monitoring capabilities of webMethods Fabric.
• Standards-based access to mainframe data -- Provides access from the webMethods platform to mainframe databases via JDBC and SQL, making mainframe data transparently available to applications that require it.

These capabilities complement webMethods' existing mainframe integration functionality, which provides a very high performance, non-invasive solution for enabling on-line CICS and IMS processes to be called as Web services.

Together, webMethods and NEON offer a true cross-functional, standards-based platform that seamlessly combines SOA and EDA within a single solution. This is a dramatic improvement over traditional alternatives, which string together point-to-point and proprietary technologies as tightly coupled, costly gateways that offer limited functionality or adaptability. Additional benefits of the integrated approach include a template-based configuration model that eliminates significant custom coding typically used to define event sources and message queues.

As part of the agreement, each company has cross-certified their respective product portfolios to ensure seamless interoperability. In addition, webMethods customers will benefit from the integrated first-level support provided by webMethods for the NEON products.

"The partnership is a combination of leaders joining forces to address mission critical business process optimization requirements for the world's largest organizations. The functional depth of the joint solution will be unchallenged by any other vendor, and the expertise supporting it will ensure the maximum reward for the lowest risk," said Mark Cresswell, president and CEO, NEON Systems.