RESTON, Va. -- Software AG, Inc.:

Natural Business Services is the Only Full-Lifecycle Service
  Development and Runtime Environment to Operate Natively on Multiple
                          Mainframe Platforms

   Rapidly Generates Natural Applications as Web Services for Re-Use
             Within a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Software AG, Inc. today announced a new service-oriented development environment for its Natural application development platform as the first new product under its Natural 2006 product line. Natural Business Services is currently the only full-lifecycle service development and runtime environment to operate natively on multiple mainframe platforms. Natural Business Services enables developers to use modeling technology to create new service-oriented business functions that can take advantage of the proven transactional capabilities of the mainframe. By hiding the complexity of the mainframe, Natural application developers can more easily and quickly provide enterprise-scale services for Java, .NET or SOA environments.

"With Natural 2006 and Natural Business Services, we can work towards the implementation of a service-oriented architecture and expect great advantages in new development initiatives and the integration of our Point of Sales System, data warehouse and intranet processes," said Thomas Reimann, head of System Development at Apollo Optik. "Compared to other development environments that we have used, Natural is highly productive and users can learn it very quickly. Natural is strategic to our business."

New Working Relationship

Natural Business Services is designed to increase developer productivity and reduce the cost for Natural developers to build service-oriented applications. In addition, Natural Business Services provides developers working in other environments, such as Java and .NET, with the ability to invoke transaction-oriented services particularly suited to running on the mainframe, such as financial applications requiring extremely high throughput levels. Thus, Natural Business Services facilitates a more interactive working relationship between mainframe-based developers and server-based developers.

"The introduction of Natural Business Services signals a new era of productivity for developers using Natural," said Joe Gentry, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Transaction Systems for Software AG. "Finally, new service-based applications can be rapidly created that take full advantage of the mainframe's unique strengths, and that can also be re-used across platforms and in the broader context of the service-oriented approach being adopted by organizations worldwide."