Transoft Announces Intelligent Adapter Product Suite

Product Family Enables E-Business and Enterprise Application Integration

February 19, 2001 - Transoft, a leading international provider of application integration products and services, today announced the launch of its suite of intelligent Adapters which solve the problem of integrating new e-business applications with existing core applications to provide seamless, scalable, end-to-end solutions that meet real business needs.

The complete Transoft Adapters product suite provides unrivalled connectivity from Java, EJB, XML, COM , CORBA, JDBC and ODBC environments to almost any existing data and application logic, wherever it is stored. Transoft also claims it is the first product set to combine such connectivity with a choice of non-intrusive screen processing or selective componentization of the legacy - the former being faster to implement, the latter providing a component-based architecture that gives optimum scalability and flexibility to meet any future business or technology requirement.

The first Transoft Adapter products were the U/SQL Adapters, announced in 1995, which provide ODBC (relational) access to 10 types of non-relational data including COBOL, C-ISAM and BASIC data.

The Screen Component Adapters which are announced today, the Data Component Adapters and the Language Component Adapters - all use a common intelligent component manager/broker that manages the communications between the applications and their use of required services. This approach provides the high performance and scalability critical to the fast straight-through processing required by modern e-business solution - far superior to that of conventional message-based RPC (Remote Procedure Call) or screen scraping.

"Whatever e-business solution a company is implementing, it will be faced with the challenge of connecting its new e-business applications into its existing business-critical applications," said Paul Holland, Transoft's chief executive officer. "The Transoft Adapter product suite provides companies with an unrivalled choice of technologies for integrating modern applications with their business logic and core data, be it in COBOL, RPG, C, BASIC or any other language."

The Transoft Screen Component Adapter is a new approach to legacy integration/modernization that provides the benefits of screen scraping, without its key disadvantages. It provides a fast-to-implement, non-intrusive solution -- but without the limited scalability, lack of standards compliance and restrictive look-and-feel associated with traditional screen scrapers. The Transoft Screen Component Adapter turns 5250, 3270, or VT100 legacy application screens into re-usable, component-based application interfaces that can be integrated into new applications as Enterprise Java Beans, XML data streams, COM and CORBA objects. It therefore provides most of the benefits of componentization without requiring the existing code to be componentized.

The Transoft Adapters also provide a fast and simple way for a wide range of Application Server or Integration Broker products to seamlessly connect to COBOL and RPG applications and data. Because the product suite provides support for XML, Java Beans, EJB, COM, CORBA, ODBC and JDBC, any EAI broker can easily use the Transoft Adapter products as its off-the-shelf adapter technology for accessing legacy applications. "Many organizations that implement EAI architectures using an application server product have to solve the problem of integrating with their legacy applications," said Paul Holland. "Transoft Adapter technology can provide a quick and cost-effective solution to this hurdle."

The technology of the Transoft Adapter product suite is already proven in conventional applications and e-business applications. A number of customers have developed substantial e-business applications using the Transoft Adapters including a B2B e-trading Web application that closely integrates with COBOL-based distribution applications; the Web-based delivery of a COBOL portfolio management system; and a Java-based pictorial Web application for an auto-parts catalogue originally developed in BASIC. Details of these are available on www.transoft.com.

"Customer requirements for integration are complex and broad, particularly in the legacy world. Many vendors, offering solutions for legacy integration, provide only one approach; Transoft offers a high level of flexibility to connect into legacy assets," said Tyler McDaniel, senior analyst for Application Strategies at Hurwitz Group.

"The Transoft Adapter product suite offers to extend indefinitely the return on investment organizations have made in their legacy applications," said Paul Holland. "Our customers are proving, time and time again, that bricks-and-mortar businesses can successfully compete in the e-business age when they achieve quick, seamless and cost-effective connectivity to their existing business-critical applications. By having this capability, these companies are able to impact their bottom line by reaching new markets and new customers without having to re-invent their information systems."

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