BEA Continues Service Oriented Architecture Push
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BEA Systems is set to release Diablo, an SOA-based application server that is the cornerstone of the upcoming WebLogic Platform 9.0.
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Can it deliver on its promises? Comment Service oriented architectures, or SOAs, have been positioned as the great leap forwards in how IT will finally come to be the major facilitator to the business.â¦
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Delivering the capabilities of traditional EAI products within a light-footprint, standards-based infrastructure supporting incremental integration
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Rallying around the move toward services-oriented architecture, Big Blue rolls out a bevy of updated services.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM released SOA productsÂ for integrating software applications and improving business processes, and said more customers are starting to understand the SOA concept. IBM is encouraging businesses to create discrete, "loosely coupled" processes that can be monitored individually and fine tuned for better performance. Building such an architecture can be complex and requires services from IBM, but the result should be a more nimble and competitive business, according to IBM. The first new offering is a set of software packages to help companies in specific industries -- initially health care, insurance, banking, and telecommunications -- automate processes using an SOA, or services-oriented architecture. The term refers to a way of designing IT systems so that services, such as an insurance claim approval, can be reused or modified more easily. The packages come with prebuilt templates for processes and standards common to each of the four industries. The health-care package, for example, ensures that SOA applications comply with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act for managing health-care data. The offerings stem fromÂ IBM's acquisition last year of Webify Solutions, which focused on the health-care and insurance industries. IBM updated those packages and created others for the two new industries, said Manoj Saxena, a vice president with IBM Global Business Services and formerly Webify's CEO. It has also translated the products into several languages. The packages, each known as a WebSphere Business Services Fabric, start from $300,000 for an unlimited number of processors and end users, IBM said. The company also released an update to WebSphere Business Monitor, which tracks the performance of business processes. "For example, if I'm an insurance company I might have a goal to process claims about chipped windshields in two hours. This tool shows me how long I am taking, and I can see that the problem is originating from my processing center in Prague, or wherever." The previous version looked primarily at people-based processes, while the update looks at content-based processes and also gives a geographic view through a connection into the Google Maps Web service. IBM's Lotus division has employed Google Maps before, but this is the first time it has been included with a WebSphere product. Pricing for WebSphere Monitor starts at $88,500 for 100 "processor value units," an IBM pricing plan that takes processor type into account. Explaining the benefits of SOA to a CEO can be a tough sell, although Saxena said IT people understand the idea a lot better than 18 months ago, and sales cycles are shorter. "It used to be very education-heavy," he said. Business people want to see where the value is in SOA. "It's a bit like where we were with the Internet in 1995," he said. "People put up Web pages and pretty catalogues but business people didn't really see the value of it until you put a shopping cart around it. We're at the same stage with SOA. We're past the project-level discussion and now it's a question of how to take it to the business level." Regulatory compliance concerns also inhibit SOA adoption. "They are quickly realizing there's this notion of rogue services, with people publishing services all over the place that people can use." Information industries like finance and insurance are moving more quickly to SOA than physical goods industries such as manufacturing. Information industries tend to use more home-grown software and less packaged software from the likes of SAPÂ and Oracle, Saxena said. Those packages aren't necessarily less flexible but customers tend to be tied to the vendors' release cycles, which affects the timing of new projects, he said. Europe has caught up considerably to the U.S. in its SOA adoption, according to Saxena. IBM also introduced services to help customers figure out where they can get the most value from integrating processes, how far along the road they are today and what tools and services they can use. IBM encourages customers to begin with small projects, and typical engagements are four to six months, Saxena said. IBM sees five levels of SOA readiness from "ad hoc" through "aware" to "world class." He estimated that most Fortune 1000 companies are between levels one and two, although a company may be more advanced in a particular area like IT systems. Wednesday's releases are the first of several SOA announcements IBM will make in the coming weeks, targeting companies at different stages of SOA development.
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(InfoWorld) - In a little more than a decade, BEA Systems built itself into a top middleware player and one of the leading lights in SOA. Thatâs a good thing. Revenues at BEA are soaring (up 19 percent in the latest quarter) and the companyâs stock price rose around 50 percent in the last year. But playing in a hot space such as SOA is a classic instance of having the tiger by its tail. As CEO Alfred Chuang told InfoWorld Executive Editor at Large Eric Knorr in a recent interview, the company still needs to move aggressively to avoid being left high and dry by rapid shifts in the technology landscape. InfoWorld: What do you think is the future of enterprise software and where does BEA fits into it? Alfred Chuang: You will have vendors like us that will be selling platforms (and) application vendors that will be selling application components, yet they will be assembled on the fly by an end-user. End-users will be using a tool -- or they will be using templates or processes -- that will represent what their environment is. They can always go back to change the process on the fly, yet the components will continue to be usable within those processes. One big advantage: Youâll be able to upgrade component functionality without affecting the process itself. Today, this is a total mess. IW: Where do you think SaaS (software as a service) will fit in to this vision?                                                     AC: Like when you rent a car, you donât really care much about your car. When people drive a rent-a-car, they drive very differently from when they drive their own car. You see the craziest man driving around the hills of San Francisco in a Ford Taurus -- itâs likely to be me -- and Iâm killing the brakes coming down the streets of San Francisco, flying over the hills, because I donât give a crap. Now, if itâs my own car that Iâm driving, itâs very different. Iâll be parking at the corner parking station and making sure nobody can possibly ding me. There will be people who want full flexibility, so all they want is a rental car. There are people who will want ownership so badly ... that they will buy the software. SaaS will be able to attract small groups in large corporations, or small organizations, period. I think a successful company, including ourselves, even at the middleware layer, will have to offer both to people. IW: So youâre not ruling out offering some of what BEA offers now as a service? AC: Not only am I not ruling it out, we have to do it.Â  Iâm saying itâs not going to be 100 percent of the world. IW: What about the effect of the open source model? AC: Open source is the ultimate tool to keep us honest, especially on pricing. Linux is a good example. I spent the first half of my career from the very beginning of Sun until they were several billion dollars in size. For the longest time, Solaris was the reason people would buy a very, very expensive box. All of a sudden, people did not notice -- especially the people at Sun -- that the API was no longer dependent on Solaris. Weâre not calling any of the functions directly on the operating system anymore. They are programming that to things like J2EE. So overnight, what happened is someone came up with a computer running an operating system that J2EE can run on. Literally, thereâs no porting, thereâs no changing, nothing. In fact, the same application is being extended by buying more CPUs running Linux. Linux totally commoditized Unix in the marketplace. Open source serves [another] very important purpose, I think, which is education. SOA [service-oriented architecture] is lifting us to a different level. Look at the application server or integration software. You really want to educate developers? Let them tinker with whatâs inside so they fully understand what theyâre dealing with. A smart vendor will always watch whether their software is being commoditized. And itâs not wrong to be commoditized as long as your volume catches up with it. You must continue to innovate in abstractions at higher and higher levels. The demand is unlimited at this point in time. Look at our appetite for Internet applications. It is absolutely insatiable. We want more and more and more. I want to do everything on the Internet. If Iâm booking an airline ticket -- I just came back from Asia last night -- I did the whole thing in my car on my 3G BlackBerry.
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(InfoWorld) - Middleware vendor BEA Systems Inc. will lay out its Java virtualization strategy later this week in China, an approach the vendor hopes will differentiate it from its competitors. At its BEAWorld user conference in Beijing from Wednesday to Thursday, the company will announce a product road map for software due out in 2007 and aimed at optimizing how enterprise Java applications run in virtualized environments. The move has been driven by customer demand, according to Guy Churchward, vice president of WebLogic products at BEA. Users are looking for ways to improve on the more general-purpose server virtualization capabilities already provided by vendors such as EMC Corp., XenSource Inc. and Microsoft Corp. "Customers were running into challenges around efficiency, optimization and performance," he said. Come the first quarter of next year, BEA plans to release WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (WLS-VE), a version of its Java application server that includes the vendor's new Liquid VM technology. Liquid VM is a BEA-specific Java Virtual Machine that enables Java applications to run directly on a hypervisor without requiring an operating system to be present. Initially, Liquid VM will work only with VMware's ESX Server hypervisor, but BEA plans to support other hypervisors in future including those from XenSource and Microsoft, Churchward said. Being able to run Java applications virtually without recourse to an operating system will enable users to substantially reduce the amount of computer power, enabling them to lower the hardware costs per application. Drawing a comparison betweenÂ VMware's current approach towards application virtualization and BEA's new take, Churchward gave an analogy about moving house. VMware's like a removal firm that comes in and packages up the entire contents of a person's house and transports it using massive trucks. "Once you open the boxes at your new place, you discover you don't need 60 percent of it," he said. BEA's approach resembles an individual taking the time to go through all their possessions prior to moving and throwing away what they don't need, therefore requiring smaller vans to transport their belongings. "BEA's approach directly targets Java infrastructure flexibility, which has not always been the platform's core strength," James Governor, analyst with RedMonk, wrote in an e-mail interview. He believes the vendor is the first among the major middleware vendors to go down this path, but points to smaller companies Cassatt Corp. and DataSynapse Inc., which are already pursuing what he terms "a virtualize/automate/WebLogic strategy." Due out in the summer of 2007 is Liquid Operations Control (LOC), BEA software to manage and control Java applications running on virtualized infrastructure. While users can combine LOC and Liquid VM to improve their WebLogic virtualization capabilities, BEA intends to widen LOC's scope so it can be applied to all enterprise Java applications, Churchward said, including support for the Apache Software Foundation's Tomcat technology. Moving to manage other Java application servers is a course BEA has already begun to pursue, Governor wrote. "It's the right strategy, which BEA could dramatically accelerate by purchasing Covalent," he added. Open-source company Covalent Technologies Inc. provides products and services for Tomcat and other Apache software including the Axis Web service framework and Geronimo application server. Â
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SAN FRANCISCOâBEA Systems Inc. took advantage of the proximity of Oracle Corp.&#39;s OpenWorld conference here this week to introduce BEA WebLogic Server 9.0, which is designed to allow developers to rapidly
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InfoWorld - BEA Systems&#39; planned next-generation application platform, called Project Genesis, will feature an open source component and accommodate scripting languages such as Ruby and Perl, BEA officials said at the BEAWorld San Francisco conference on Tuesday.
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The Eclipse Foundation with its Swordfish project is developing an open source SOA framework intended for applications ranging from enterprise environments to embedded systems.Based on technology from German logistics company Deutsche Post, Swordfish features an SOA runtime platform that leverages three popular projects: Service Component Architecture (SCA), Java Business Integration (JBI), and Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi). SCA provides a common programming model and assembly description format while JBI serves as a common messaging model. OSGi, which is the basis of the Eclipse runtime platform, provides common deployment and runtime component models in Swordfish.The Swordfish architecture uses OSGi to implement JBI and SCA."[Swordfish] is a framework to bring [together] different components, which are needed for an SOA platform," said Ricco Deutscher, CTO at Sopera, which is leading the Swordfish effort and offers an open source SOA suite based on the project."[Enterprise IT directors] should be very excited because this is up and running [for] more than six years in the largest logistics company in the world, and it is a very proven, mature technology," said Deutscher.According to the Eclipse Swordfish blog, Deutsche Post developed the core SOA engine with plans calling for the code to be refactored into an OSGi-based SOA engine. The OSGi engine serves as a milestone to an SOA runtime framework.The version 1.0 production release of Swordfish is scheduled for the third quarter of this year.Swordfish offers a way to use JBI, SCA, and OSGi for server-side applications, said analyst Michael Cote of Redmonk. It also demonstrates Eclipse's reach to the server, he said."Where I see Swordfish fitting in is [it is] sort of [an] 'enterprise' framework for writing software and applications with OSGi," said Cote. The Swordfish vision also appears to follow the ESB-driven (enterprise service bus) way of doing SOA, he said."I think the more interesting thing about Swordfish than just the SOA angle is how it's part of Eclipse's overall idea of doing more runtime -- stuff for the server side rather than desktop stuff," Cote said.The Sopera open source suite features Swordfish and components for messaging, registry, security, and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services). Sopera supports business applications, as well as legacy and SAP NetWeaver integration. It also provides a gateway to third-party ESBs.Chris Kanarcus, U.S. correspondent with IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate, contributed to this report.
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Blog: BEA's Aqualogic-branded collaboration tools look to take consumer Web techniques to business setting.
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InfoWorld - Taking another step towards gluing together heterogeneous environments, IBM is building a new version of WebSphere that will better leverage Web services to tie together a patchwork of server-based environments.
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A version of BEA Systems Inc&#39;s WebLogic Platform for ISVs is expected today which the company believes will help boost overall sales of its platform.
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BEA Systems yesterday unveiled Version 9.0 of its WebLogic Server application server, code-named Diablo, with the promise of simplified development of service-oriented applications.
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(InfoWorld) - Long a player in the geeky world of enterprise middleware, BEA will soon be diving into a frothy Web 2.0 space as it tries to tap into the genius of Web sites such as del.icio.us, Wikipedia, and YouTube, according to Mark Carges, executive vice president of business interaction at BEA. In an exclusive interview with InfoWorld, Carges said that he will use his keynote address at BEA World 2006 to trumpet the companyâs successes and to outline the companyâs vision for the future, including three projects â Graffiti, Runner, and Builder â that will add social bookmarking to BEAâs portals and will give non-IT staff the tools to create blogs, wikis, and other lightweight applications that tap into BEAâs service infrastructure. Calling 2006 a âyear of innovation,â Carges will tell BEA World attendees that BEA now has more than 1,000 customers using the companyâs products to create SOA solutions. âI thought it would take three to five years for most of the people weâre working with to build out their SOA,â Carges said. âI was wrong.â Business process tools such as those BEA acquired with Fuego in March, now AquaLogic Business Process Management, have spurred SOA adoption, Carges said. âBPM really is a business driver for SOA inside IT organizations,â he added. Looking ahead, Carges sees the convergence of SOAs, BPM, and the Web 2.0 development model that is fueling Web sites such as YouTube and MySpace. âThe information workers in your company have all this knowledge,â Carges said. âWhat if you could search for it and use it to drive applications and behavior and performance out to the users or to your customer base?â BEAâs answer comes in the form of three new internal projects that will marry Web 2.0 features and development tools to BEAâs portals so that ordinary users can create and manage what Carges calls âsituational applicationsâ without the help of IT staff. Graffiti will add social-bookmarking and tagging features to the AquaLogic and WebLogic portals so that users can place and search on tagged content, as with sites such as del.icio.us. âIt will do wonders for the enterprise and benefit corporations in ways we canât imagine,â Carges said. âSuddenly youâre taking traditional applications and situational applications and bridging them.â The two other projects, Runner and Builder, will help workers create those situational applications. Runner will create a lightweight portal infrastructure that Web application developers can use as a foundation to build on. âWhat weâve realized is that there are so many Web apps in an enterprise that arenât portal apps, we want to be able to help people manage those, too,â Carges said. Builder will work with SOA tools from AquaLogic and will give ordinary users the ability to tap into SOA data stores without extensive custom coding, he explained. BEA is targeting the new products for the first half of 2007. The tools could be wrapped into AquaLogic or be spun out as their own products, Carges said.
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(InfoWorld) - SAN FRANCISCO -- Positioning itself as the industry's first provider of a native SOA platform, BEA Systems unveiled SOA 360 -- as in 360 degrees -- at Tuesdays' BEAWorld 2006. The vagueness of the announcement, however, has at least one analyst claiming the company still has a lot of explaining to do. SOA 360 spans three BEA product families -- Tuxedo, WebLogic, and AquaLogic -- and features an SOA collaborative tooling environment, called BEA WorkSpace 360. Another key element is the company's "microServices Architecture," aka mSA. Based on SOA and the concept of a services network, mSA features modular services based on BEA products, is event-driven, and uses notification services to publish and discover modular components or "microServices." WorkSpace 360 includes a product family due in 2007. It is geared to enable business and IT professionals to collaborate and work individually and features roles for the business analyst, enterprise architect, developer, and IT operations professional. Working with the role-based products is WorkSpace Central, which is designed to provide SOA lifecycle management and centers around the company's metadata repository, AquaLogic Enterprise Repository. "SOA 360 is a governing approach to modeling, creating, developing, and deploying a full lifecycle SOA application. It is a unifying methodology," featuring all of BEA's SOA products, said Rob Levy, executive vice president and CTO of BEA. "I'm here to tell you with confidence that SOA is very real," BEA Chairman and CEO Alfred Chuang said in a keynote presentation focused on SOA. Details provided during presentations on Tuesday, however, were too vague, said Shawn Willet, principal analyst at Current Analysis. "There's just too many unanswered questions right now," Willett said. For instance, it is unclear what makes something mSA-enabled, Willett said. He did, however, praise BEA for being ahead of the pack when it launched its unified middleware platform, BEA WebLogic Platform. BEA's modularization plans for its WebLogic Server application server were revealed in March. But the company now believes this approach can work for all its products, said Bill Roth, vice president of the BEA tools unit. Modularization provides the right services to the customer, Roth said. "Modularization will be a key design point for us, and ultimately this microServices Architecture will have an effect across all of our products," Roth said. BEA has set a goal of having all its products leverage mSA by the end of 2008. MSA will key in on backplane components, application frameworks, activity services, presentation services, and infrastructure services. The architecture will leverage industry protocols and standards such as OSGi, SOAP, WSDL, XML Schema, WS-Security, and SAML. Also at the show on Tuesday, BEA: * announced the release of AquaLogic Enterprise Repository 2.5, a metadata repository based on the company's recently acquired Flashline technology; * launched its AquaLogic Data Services Platform 2.5, which provides a virtual, unified view of data regardless of type or location; * unveiled BEA Guardian Support Service, providing predictive and pre-emptive software support; * and announced the general availability of SALT (Services Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo) 1.1, which is intended to allow Tuxedo applications to be exposed as Web services.
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Latency obvious BEA Systems is adding go faster stripes to its Java application server, with two products designed for time-critical work environments.â¦