A local computer system and a remote computer system are connected by a network. When the local computer system needs to initiate communication with the remote computer system or vice versa, a cross-system request is generated, and placed in a request queue on the computer system generating the request. All cross-system requests residing on request queues and are handled by two jobs executing on local computer system. The first of these jobs, a request push job, pushes cross-system requests existing on local computer system's request queue to the remote computer system's request queue. The second of these jobs, a request pull job, pulls cross-system requests existing on remote computer system's request queue over to local computer system's request queue. In this way, all cross-system communications are initiated from a computer system inside the firewall (e.g., local computer system) without violating any outside-in dataflow limitations.