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OpenConnect Cites Customer Wins, Partnership Expansion in Driving Banner Results

discoverNow™ program uncovers significant improvement opportunities; Average ROI equals 4 month payback.

Dallas, TX – July 31, 2006 - OpenConnect Systems, Inc., delivering technology solutions that turn mainframe assets into business value, today announced significant growth and accomplishments achieved in the past 12 months. From expanded partnerships to new product introductions, OpenConnect led the market with innovations to connect the mainframe to evolving technology architectures, helping numerous client companies discover how to unlock the hidden value in their mainframe enabled business processes.

Innovation was a key theme for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2006, with the introduction of a new technology that is addressing the until-now missing discovery piece to business process management. Launched in February 2006, OpenConnect’s Comprehend product is a groundbreaking solution that discovers business processes by observing true end-user behavior in the enterprise. OpenConnect was invited to introduce this product at DEMO 2006, an event that showcases technological innovations that have a significant impact on the marketplace.

"In the past year, we built a strong foundation in the market by developing new technologies, expanding our relationships with partners and providing measurable results for industry-leading companies," said Edward Peters, CEO of OpenConnect. "The introduction of our Comprehend product has been a turning point for the creation of an emerging market that we call Business Process Discovery. Discovery is the key phase to any initiative, whether it’s creating re-usable business services for a SOA, enabling a BPM initiative, or simply identifying process inefficiencies to allow companies to realign their technology-based processes for a competitive advantage. Our 2-week discoverNow™ service engagement program has been the catalyst in demonstrating to clients exactly how to improve their mainframe business processes."

Other notable achievements for the fiscal year include:

  • Partner Enhancements

    In the past year, OpenConnect partnered with several companies to further expand offerings to customers. The company joined forces with HostBridge, to develop cdiConnect, mainframe software that automatically creates web services from CICS transactions.

    OpenConnect further expanded its product offerings with the launch of sqlConnect, a product allowing companies creating new business processes to access mainframe data through standard SQL. This product was developed in conjunction with CONNX Solutions, a leading provider of enterprise information integration solutions.

    Additionally, OpenConnect joined Proforma’s Common Interchange Format (CIF) Consortium to facilitate the exchange of the business process knowledge discovered by Comprehend and CIF aware BPM tools, such as Proforma’s ProVision enterprise modeling suite.

  • Customer Success

    OpenConnect signed over 90 new clients over the past year, including leaders in financial services, insurance and logistics, and found new traction among different market segments.

    General Motors extended their relationship with new purchases and specifying OpenConnect as an official global standard solution for all mainframe access.

    Harry Fox, mechanical rights agent for almost 28,000 music publishers, needed to provide secure online access to tools for its publisher customers, the record labels and its own internal support applications. A customer for over five years, Harry Fox built on its initial deployment, partnering with OpenConnect to optimize and customize access to midrange applications and information.

  • Product Options

    Launched in February 2006, OpenConnect rolled out discoverNow™, a new offering to provide organizations with a quick, cost-effective means to understand the return on investment (ROI) and productivity gains possible when transitioning mainframe assets to service-oriented

About OpenConnect

OpenConnect is the premier supplier of technology solutions that turn information technology assets into business value. With a rich history of innovations in both mainframe and Web technologies, OpenConnect helps the world's largest and most complex organizations comprehend, configure and securely connect to their mainframe applications and data through Web-based architectures. OpenConnect's solutions save companies time and money, improve return on legacy technology investments and minimize the risk of expansion into the online realm. OpenConnect's products are distributed in more than 60 countries and used by more than 60 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information on OpenConnect, visit www.oc.com.

Press Contact:

Jennifer Buchhalter
Articulate Communications Inc.
617.451.7788 ext. 16
jbuchhalter@articulatepr.com