NetManage and HiT Software Partner for Structured Data

Published: June 10, 2008

by Alex Woodie

NetManage, which is in the process of being acquired by MicroFocus, and HiT Software, a longtime developer of data providers for the i OS (formerly i5/OS) platform, have teamed up to help customers give structure to their data.

Under the partnership, which was announced two weeks ago, NetManage and HiT Software will work together to help organizations convert unstructured data running on "legacy" platforms (z/OS and i OS) into structured data housed in modern SQL-based databases (ostensibly running on other platforms).

The partnership will include two tools: NetManage's OnWeb "legacy integration server," which will expose legacy 5250 and 3270 applications as XML, and HiT's Allora, which will then map the XML files into structured relational database systems.

Once the unstructured, legacy data is converted into a structured format running under a relational database management system (Allora supports nearly two dozen RDBMs, including DB2/400), the data is much more accessible, and is no longer constrained within the green-screen construct.

The companies explore the use of Allora and NetManage to unlock data from its legacy chains in a new white paper, titled "Add Structure to Unstructured Legacy Data: A 10 Minute Step-by-Step White Paper." The 18-page report, which was written by NetManage's director of product management, Archie Roboostoff, is available on the Web at https://www.netmanage.com/customers/stories/newmanageHiTsw_whitePaper.pdf.

"Combining these two products, OnWeb and Allora, an organization can, within 10 minutes and without writing any SQL statements [or XSLT programming], export unstructured legacy screen data into any structured RDBMS in real time," Roboostoff writes in the white paper. "The bottom line is that when it comes to exposing data locked within legacy systems, the data is actually being moved out of one system, and into another to preserve or create structure where there once was none."

In other news, NetManage announced it will be holding a special shareholders meeting next Tuesday to vote on the proposed acquisition by Micro Focus. The board of directors for NetManage, which is a publicly traded company, unanimously recommends shareholders vote for the deal. "We feel confident that this is the right strategy for our shareholders, customers, and employees," stated Zvi Alon, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of NetManage.

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