Gregg Wilhoit, DataDirect's chief architect, is one of the smartest professionals I have met. He continues to drive the Shadow line of products.
Shadow is rooted in the data integration space but has evolved over time to include programmatic integration as well.
From an architecture standpoint, Shadow is a mainframe-centric integration solution. It is probably one of the fastest and most stable products available that runs natively on the mainframe (Other such products are GT Software's Ivory, HostBridge, SOA Software SOLA and IBM's CICS Web Services support).
The major argument against mainframe centric integration solutions is usually one of cost. With the broad adoption of SOA for instance, all mainframe-centric solutions suffer from the cost of XML parsing/formatting. This is a CPU intensive activity that affects the overall mainframe cost of ownership (On mainframes, the more CPU you consume, the higher your software license fees are).
Gregg was one of the first (maybe the first as far as I know) who made it possible to reduce such CPU costs by exploiting IBM's specialty engines on system z. These co-processors can offload java and DB2 related payloads from the main processors therefore avoiding the license fees inflation. Since then, other companies have jumped in.
Although the ZIIP/zAAP offloading is good news for mainframe centric solutions, I doubt this will significantly reduce their total cost. One important aspect of integration is that it needs monitoring for instance. It is a whole lot trickier to tune mainframe centric solutions than distributed ones. It also requires very specific and costly skills and software.
When comparing distributed integration to mainframe-centric integration, it is important to compare development costs, administration costs and ultimately exit costs. I doubt that the total would be in favor of mainframe centricity.
In my opinion, the major argument for mainframe-centric solutions is one of performance and stability. The cost though will probably remain high.
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