z/TPF Announcement

September 16, 2005

Today I am pleased to tell you of the general availability of the new version of Transaction Processing Facility (TPF), z/TPF Enterprise Edition (EE) Version 1.1. As you know, TPF is currently installed in major data centers around the world and its performance today is founded on many years of development focus by the IBM Corporation. IBM expects TPF usage, on a global basis, to continue to grow in the future and we are enthusiastic and optimistic about TPF's future.

As part of an appropriate solution for your company (one which could also include various software products such as WebSphere, web services, Linux and other options), we offer

z/TPF as IBM's strategic solution for large, highly scalable, highly available messaging systems. It will exploit IBM's 64 bit z/Architecture and the capability of IBM eserver zSeries® and

IBM System z9, which is designed to help enhance TPF's efficiency and scalability. z/TPF

can also help to transform the traditional mainframe development environment to an open development environment. With z/TPF, application development is possible on a wide variety

of hardware using the Linux operating system which can provide the advantages of commonly available tools, skills and a common programming model.

IBM plans to continue adding capabilities to z/TPF to help meet the needs of our customers well into the future. We know that future product plans can change, and while we cannot make any guarantees, it is our intent to enhance TPF's capabilities while preserving its core values: high volume, high availability, high scalability, and low unit cost. Currently, the IBM TPF Organization (which includes the TPF Development Lab in Poughkeepsie, NY, as well as the TPF Marketing team, the TPF Services team and the TPF Support team) is dedicated to supporting the current release of TPF and the new version z/TPF.

Our web pages at ibm.com/tpf have been updated with information about z/TPF and it's complementary products. The information available at ibm.com/tpf includes product libraries, IBM's TPF User's group presentations, and the z/TPF Migration Portal.

IBM looks forward to working with you to assist in addressing your business needs. TPF has been an important asset to both you/your business and to IBM in addressing mutual business objectives in the past, and we look forward to helping you meet your growing business needs of the future.

Sincerely,