LAS VEGAS, NV–( EMWNews – April 8, 2008) – IBM IMPACT 2008 SMART SOA CONFERENCE – BOOTH

E22 — From the IBM Impact 2008 Smart SOA™ Conference, WebLayers™ Inc., which

automates SOA

governance, launched an automated governance solution for mainframes.

An extension of WebLayers’ award-winning flagship solution, WebLayers

Center for z/OS empowers enterprises to take a comprehensive approach to

governance as they transition to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

WebLayers will demonstrate its WebLayers Center family of products in

exhibit booth E22 at the conference.

WebLayers is a market leader for automated SOA governance.

The WebLayers Center family provides a policy-based approach to automate

what has traditionally been a manual, labor-intensive process of defining

and enforcing governance from design to deployment.

Nationwide among first companies implementing automated mainframe governance

“Nationwide takes a very comprehensive approach to governance, and like

most large organizations, continues to leverage the mainframe for much of

its business-critical data management and processing,” said Brad Tussing,

AVP at Nationwide. “After better understanding the capabilities of

WebLayers for both policy management and governance in our SOA environment,

we worked with their development team to extend their technology and

principals into the core mainframe environment. The purpose of this

initiative is to provide a single solution to define, manage, and enforce

policies across a wide variety of asset types throughout the organization.”

Nationwide will provide details of their work on improving IT Governance in

two different track sessions during IBM Impact 2008. For details, visit

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/websphere/events/impact2008/.

WebLayers Center for z/OS helps maintain and extend mainframe applications

WebLayers Center for z/OS plays a critical role in helping organizations

overcome the challenges they face maintaining and extending mainframe

applications including:

--  Codifying the institutional knowledge of mainframe programming best

    practices and guidelines to ensure it is passed along to the next

    generation of programmers;

--  Defining and enforcing application-development policies that ensure

    efficient utilization of mainframe processing resources;

--  Effectively service-enabling mainframe resources as part of the

    transition to SOA; and

--  Automating the process of manual code reviews to ensure conformance

    with company standards, guidelines and best-practices.

    

Many of the applications that need to be SOA-enabled are mainframe

applications

According to a recent report by Gartner, “Policy

Management… is the heart of… governance, because policy creation,

administration, management and enforcement are critical to the ability to

ensure service operation and design.”(1)

“In software development and delivery, the success of SOA is dependent on a

strong governance environment,” said Scott Hebner, vice president of

marketing and strategy, IBM Rational software. “Customers working with IBM

and WebLayers are better able to apply automated governance as they adopt

modern open-source technology in their mainframe environments to more

easily transition to SOA.”

“According to a study released last month by IBM user group SHARE, many of

the applications that need to be SOA-enabled are mainframe applications. No

other vendor has addressed this need,” said Gregg Bjork, CEO of WebLayers.

“Extending WebLayers Center to the mainframe environment was an easy and

logical step for us, and one that many of our existing SOA governance

customers have embraced.”

Key capabilities announced today with WebLayers Center for z/OS

--  WebLayers Policy Manager™ automates the definition, association and

    management of governance policies and enforcement for mainframe assets

    including Cobol and non-source components such as JCL, ISAM and VSAM.

    

--  WebLayers Governors™ ensure the enforcement of the right policies,

    at the right time, in the right context.  WebLayers now has Governors that

    interface directly with a variety of IT infrastructure that run on the

    mainframe and open systems to govern mainframe assets including:  Serena

    ChangeMan ZMF, IBM Rational ClearCase, WebSphere Service Registry and

    Repository for z/OS, Rational Asset Manager and Rational Developer for

    System z.

    

--  WebLayers Center Server™ has been certified to run on z/OS.  As a

    Java application, WebLayers Center Server runs within WebSphere Application

    Server for z/OS.  WebLayers Center Server can also be deployed on Linux on

    IBM System z as well as a variety of other open systems and Windows

    platforms.

    

--  WebLayers Policy Libraries™ provide the industry's largest

    collection of pre-built policies including a Mainframe Cobol Library.

    

About WebLayers

WebLayers automates SOA

governance with the industry’s only platform-independent policy

management solution. Based on the largest collection of pre-built

policies, WebLayers helps Fortune 500 companies and government agencies

begin their governance effort in design-time, where it will have the most

impact, and enforce it through deployment in order to reduce risk and

accelerate ROI. Learn more at www.WebLayers.com.

WebLayers and WebLayers Center are trademarks of WebLayers Inc. in the

United States and other countries. All other trademarks contained herein

are the property of their respective owners.

(1) Gartner, “Criteria for Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets,”

Daryl C. Plummer & L. Frank Kenney, January 8, 2008