Software AG goes SOA all the way
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The company sees its future in helping businesses migrate their IT systems to more flexible, SOA-enabled infrastructures; more details about the strategy are expected next month.
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ActiveMatrix reloaded Tibco last week announced the general availability of TIBCO ActiveMatrix for service-oriented architectures (SOA). This is the industry's first âservice virtualization platformâ for the deployment and governance of composite applications based on distributed, standards-based services".â¦
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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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BEA Systems on Monday is releasing a version of its application infrastructure suite designed to enable ISVs to deliver products for SOAs (service-oriented architectures).
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LIVE WEBCAST  (Source: Systinet) Organizations recognize the benefits of SOA but struggle identifying an adoption strategy that will leverage existing IT investments, meet business objectives, and guard against risks to existing business processes.Join us and hear Larry Fulton, senior analyst, Forrester Research review lessons learned form early adopters of SOA, and essential considerations for successful adoption. Larry's expertise spans infrastructure, implementation strategies, and governance related to the effective use of service-oriented architecture (SOA).
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InfoWorld - Mainframe systems are playing a key role in many SOA (service-oriented architecture) projects, according to a study released this week by IBM user group SHARE.
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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) - On Monday, Iona will release Celtix Enterprise, an enterprise service bus for departmental usage and SOA, in a move to leverage the hybrid business model arising around open source software. Through this model, the company will provide the software for free under an open source paradigm while selling subscriptions for ancillary services and support. In development for about18 months, Celtix mixes in pieces from multiple open source projects and offers capabilities for service routing and messaging. "The main driver [for Celtix] is that people would like to service-enable their existing IT environment and this allows them to do it in a very low-cost way," said Debbie Moynihan, Iona director of open source programs. With Celtix, Iona is expanding its view of open source technology, seeing it as a revenue generator and not just as a lead-in to its commercial Artix ESB, said analyst Tom Rhinelander of New Rowley Group. "What's now happened with Celtix is it's matured and they said, 'Look, we think this can be a real product,' " Rhinelander said. Celtix provides capabilities needed to get started in SOA, Rhinelander said. "Celtix is really about moving up from basic Web services to an SOA," he added. Several open source components comprise the Celtix ESB platform. These include: * Celtix Advanced Messaging, which provides messaging based on AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). It serves as an alternative to platforms such as IBM MQSeries. Iona's AMQP implementation was derived from the Apache Incubator Qpid project. * Celtix Advanced Service Engine, based on the Apache CXF project, which merges the Apache Celtix and XFire projects. The services engine offers a pluggable services framework and supports standards such as SOAP and WS-Security. * Service routing and transformation capabilities from the Codehaus Mule ESB. * Tooling for services development through the Eclipse SOA Tools Platform Project. Iona with Celtix is trying to provide an entire SOA infrastructure stack in a single solution. Also packaged with Celtix are the Spring, ServiceMix, and Tomcat servlet containers, to enable customers to deploy services across a variety of technologies. The containers serve as runtime environments for deploying services. Celtix differs from Iona's commercial Artix ESB, which is geared for much larger service deployments and can run on systems such as mainframes. Celtix runs on a Java Virtual Machine and can only integrate with over systems that use a JVM. The Advanced Service Engine and Advanced Messaging components also will be available unbundled from Celtix. "For people who just want to get started in a lightweight, small-footprint kind of way, they can do that with the Celtix Advanced Service Engine," Moynihan said.Â  Service and support prices for Celtix Enterprise start at $900 for six incidents of support.Â
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HP is announcing on Monday SOA governance software and services aimed at helping companies accelerate SOA adoption while reducing risks.Also on Monday, HP is expanding its GIF (Governance Interoperability Framework), which features specifications for governance interoperability and deepens the company's support for heterogeneous environments.Monday's announcements include a new release of HP SOA Systinet software for design and runtime governance of SOA services and services lifecycle management via an enhanced integration with HP SOA Manager."The key thing here is we've enhanced these two products so you have integrated design time and runtime governance," said Ian Bruce, HP SOA marketing manager. Design time governance covers issues around developing and deploying services as well as discovery; runtime governance entails dynamic invocation and discovery and factors like policy management and enforcement.HP SOA Systinet enables developers to check services against policies through an Eclipse-based policy validation plug-in to ensure that services conform to requirements before being published. The software also supports significantly enhanced graphical navigation, advanced reporting, searching, and expanded lifecycle support.HP's new HP SOA Registry Foundation software, meanwhile, is designed for ISVs as a standards-based way to publish and discover SOA services and artifacts. It can be embedded in packages applications.Through the new HP Validation and Implementation Service for SOA Governance, HP consultants can help customers validate SOA services by implementing a governance model using HP Systinet software. The service is intended to help predict and optimize performance of SOA applications and infrastructure. An HP Validation Service for SOA Quality, meanwhile, establishes processes for managing the business risk of SOA-enabled services, HP said.Additionally, HP is introducing services to install and configure HP SOA Systinet and HP SOA Manager to help customers get a quicker return on investment. Also being offered are new SOA education and SOA training courses.The company is also announcing an expansion of its HP Governance GIF, designed to simplify the exchange of information between HP SOA Systinet software, acting as a system of record, and third-party technologies. Ten additional partners are joining, including Active Endpoints, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, JackBe, Layer 7 Technologies, LogicLibrary, Nexaweb, Oracle, Sonoa Systems, and Vordel.HP also will make GIF specifications available at hp.com and Wikipedia. GIF partner support is being expanded as well.
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(InfoWorld) - BEA Systems this week offered a rare glimpse of its upcoming SOA (service-oriented architecture) tool set, called WorkSpace 360, with a demonstration of a prototype tool currently under development. "We're moving towards having the ability to do metadata-driven development," said Bill Roth, vice president of BEA's Workshop Business Unit, during an interview in Singapore. In the future, developers will spend most of their time creating metadata that describes the application and how it behaves, "rather than a bunch of sentences that end with semicolons," he said. "There will always be the need to write code, there will always be the need to do the lower-level stuff. But I think we can do better," Roth said. The heart of WorkSpace 360 is called WorkSpace Central, a set of tools designed for developing and managing applications built usingÂ BEA's upcoming SOA 360 platform. Scheduled to be introduced starting next year, WorkSpace 360 is designed to bring business analysts, architects, developers and IT operations executives together in a shared workspace. WorkSpace 360 will cover BEA's entire product lineup, including a mix of rich-client tools based on Eclipse and Web-based versions. "It starts potentially with AquaLogic and leveraging AquaLogic business-process management. There then will be a piece which we've previously called AquaLogic Composer, which will evolve into a bunch of tools, including a service assembly modeller," Roth said. The service assembly modeller, which is based on the SCA (Service Component Architecture) specification developed by BEA and IBM, gives users a view of how different services are connected and how they communicate, Roth said. The service assembly modeller can scan a set of services available from a registry or a data-services platform and display the connections that exist between them. The result, as demonstrated using a prototype of the tool on Roth's laptop, is a flow chart of available services, including SCA notations for each service. "What you'll be able to do ultimately is [click the] right mouse button on the links and annotate them," Roth said, noting these annotations will be saved to the metadata repository. Developers and other team members will then be able to access the annotations, he said. The service assembly modeller and other WorkSpace 360 tools are expected to be available during the first half of 2007. "Maybe sooner," Roth said.
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(InfoWorld) - Software AG has built a global customer base over 35 years by being an early mover in a couple of major technology trends. The company introduced one of the first databases, Adabas, in the 1970s, a platform-independent computer language, Natural, in the 1980s and an XML (Extensible Markup Language) server, Tamino, in the 1990s. In an interview with IDG News Service, Peter KÃ¼rpick, member of the Software AG executive board responsible for research and development, talked aboutÂ the company's evolutionary moveÂ from XML servers and integration to new products and services needed to build an SOA (service oriented architecture) infrastructure. IDGNS: How did Software AG enter the middleware market? KÃ¼rpick: In the early 90s, our founder Peter Schnell realized a need to connect various systems so that information flows would not be confined to one system. He started a project, the message broker, which is known today as our enterprise service bus. This technology allows you to connect systems of different kinds to exchange information. IDGNS: And then the Internet came along. What happened then? KÃ¼rpick: In the mid-1990s when Internet gained momentum, Software AG detected a need for companies to standardize application tools. The standard was XML and became a core business. We tagged ourselves The XML Company. But that tag is going to disappear soon as XML is now pretty much a given in the industry; it's nothing special anymore. IDGNS: So if you're not going to be The XML Company any longer, what do you want to be? KÃ¼rpick: What we're doing now with SOA is a natural extension of what we've done for the last several years. SOA is a concept of loosely coupling systems and generating new applications based on highly standardized technologies, such as Web services and business process management. We've decided to bring a technology stack to the table that covers all the basic components of SOA. This includes opening up and connecting any kind of system. We have a toolset to connect to those systems. And once you've connected to three or four systems, you'll want to orchestrate a new process that takes data from system "a" to system "b" and beyond. This is where our enterprise service bus comes into play. IDGNS: How does AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) fit into this? KÃ¼rpick: We use this technology to develop enterprise screens, or "mashups," that companies can deploy on top of their systems to have an integrated view of data being generated by a variety of applications. This is what our crossvision suite is all about. IDGNS: How do you make customers understand what SOA is all about? KÃ¼rpick: We tell customers they need one central place, an SOA registry/repository. Here they register all their metadata, or SOA "artifacts," which describe interfaces, business processes, Web services and more. The repository is a library of sorts where users store all the ways they connect systems, providing a map of their IT landscape. It allows them to govern and manage their SOA infrastructure. IDGNS: So this is your interpretation of SOA -- to work through this repository? KÃ¼rpick: We say that an SOA registry/ repository is a must. It allows businesses to govern the life-cyle of SOA components, such as services, processes and policies. IDGNS: Is this repository approach unique to you? KÃ¼rpick: There are only two companies in world doing this right now: Software AG and Hewlett-Packard, via an acquisition.Â HP acquired Mercury Interactive, which owned Systinet -- the only competitor with a similar approach. IDGNS: Are there other interpretations of SOA with the library? KÃ¼rpick: You really can't run a large scale SOA landscape without a central library. As with any library, you need to know where the books are. With SOA, you need to know where all the services are you want to link and how to link them. IDGNS: And you help with your own proprietary technology? KÃ¼rpick: Our technology is entirely based on open standards. We see ourselves as a neutral player in the integration space. We're not biased toward SAP or Oracle or any other vendor of business applications for that matter. Our mission is to integrate heterogenous IT landscapes. Businesses prefer to enable new processes on what they already have. They don't want to embark on huge conversion programs. IDGNS: When companies follow a SOA path, do they need to invest heavily in consultants? KÃ¼rpick: They need some level of consultancy. SOA is a learning process. We can guide businesses and help them avoid interruptions. Our technology is based on standard ways of doing things -- for instance Eclipse as a development environment or Java as a standard way of developing code. Large companies can do much in-house. So it's really a question of how large you are and how much you want to do in-house. IDGNS: So no more XLM -- SOA is the future. But SOA can go away too, right? KÃ¼rpick: SOA is an architectural concept and I expect it will be around for at least the next 10 years or longer. The concept is really only at the beginning.
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InfoWorld - Tibco Software is shipping its ActiveMatrix 2.0 platform Monday for managing SOA, featuring an Eclipse-based development environment and an enterprise service bus.
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InfoWorld - As part of a new market strategy aimed at growth markets, business software vendor Software AG will focus on SOA (service-oriented architecture) products and services, and plans acquisitions to broaden its product portfolio and market share, company executives announced at a news conference Wednesday.
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(InfoWorld) - As any developer can tell you, creating interoperability between SOA components and existing IT environments isnât trivial. It requires a lot of effort and coding. But IBM says it has the antidote for the IT headache: composite business services in the form of wrappers around existing IT applications. Big Blueâs strategy to create reusable SOA services is largely built around technologies and tools that the company received from its August acquisition of Webify Solutions, a vendor of SOA software and services. Webify provides hundreds of industry-specific, prebuilt standards-based accelerators, tools, and frameworks. Its offerings help solve business problems that are specific to a given industry, such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance for the health care industry and ACORD (Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development) standards in the insurance industry. Within IBM, Webifyâs technology provides the basis for WebSphere Business Services Fabric (IBMâs SOA platform for modeling, assembly, and deployment of business services), says Brett MacIntyre, vice president for composite services development at IBM.                                                     âWebify (software) has given us the fabric, the view across the industry of common services used within the industry, and the tools and the methods with which to build these composite business services,â MacIntyre says. Webify also brought relationships with customers in the health care and insurance industries, and a portfolio of about 12 composite business services in the insurance and health care industries, MacIntyre says. Composite business services built by IBM will interoperate through the standard framework from Webify, with ontologies and data models associated with an industry added on top of the WebSphere Business Services Fabric to create a particular component, MacIntyre says. âFor example, a core data model that the insurance companies in the U.S. work with is part of the overall business fabric,â he says. Webify tools, processes and methodologies will also play a key role at SOA Solutions Centers in Beijing and Pune, India, says Jeby Cherian, the head of IBMâs Global Business Solutions Center, one of three organizations IBM set up to create reusable software assets.
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(InfoWorld) - Heralding the most viable, "real-world" approach to building SOAs (service-oriented architectures)Â this week,Â MicrosoftÂ  unveiled new guidelines for partners create an enterprise service bus (ESB). Usually, BEA Systems and IBM beat the SOA drum the loudest, but Microsoft renamed its Business Process and Integration Conference for BizTalk partners "SOA and Business Process Conference" with the aim demonstrate that it, too, has a plan for helping customers build SOAs. Microsoft has had itsÂ business process integration product BizTalk since 2000, but it has not been as vocal as competitors BEA and IBM in discussing a comprehensive SOA strategy. SOA is the next generation of enterprise software architectures, in which applications and services within the IT system are loosely coupled and able to be integrated piecemeal to form custom, or "composite," applications from various components across the enterprise. Microsoft worked with partner Neudesic to provide sample code and documentation for using BizTalk Server to build an ESB, which Microsoft defines as a set of capabilities -- such as mediation, transformation and integration -- for connecting business processes and services throughout the organization, said Steven Martin, a Microsoft director of product management. The company also unveiled a new adapter for Extensible Markup Language-based BizTalk that enables customers to connect the product more easily to IBM mainframe and AS/400 systems. The technology, called the BizTalk Adapter for Host Systems, is based on technologies available in Microsoft's Host Integration Server product, which the company has had for some time, Martin said. John Devadoss, a Microsoft director of architecture, said it is still finding a lot of misconceptions about SOAs among its customers, who think they have to rearchitect their entire software infrastructure "from the top down" to build SOAs. On the contrary, Microsoft believes that SOAs are more successful if there is a "real-world business driver" behind the architecture, he said. "In the real world, the success stories we see are customers taking a pragmatic, middle-out approach," he said. "The only way to truly track to the needs of the business is to take small steps along the way. The mega projects are either big science projects that never get finished or they diverge from the needs of the business."ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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IBM has released a series of SOA products for integrating software applications and improving business processes, and said more customers now understand the SOA concept.
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(InfoWorld) - Software AG will adopt the webMethods name for its Crossvision range of SOA (services oriented architecture) products, executives said Friday, outlining how they will integrate staff and products following the company'sÂ acquisition of webMethods. To eliminate one of the few overlaps in their product lines, Software AG will adopt webMethods' BPM (business process management) offering, and stop selling Fujitsu's Interstage BPM software, which it has distributed since December 2004. However, Software AG will support its existing Interstage customers for at least five years, said Peter KÃ¼rpick, board member responsible for research and development. Another area of overlap is in SOA management and governance, where KÃ¼rpick expects to see Software AG's CentraSite SOA registry and repository combined with webMethods' recently acquired Infravio SOA governance tools by the end of the year. "We are strong in managing metadata, and they are strong in governance policies, rules and regulations," he said. The combined product will likely retain the CentraSite name, he said. All other areas of the companies' product lines are complementary, and there will be no need for customers to migrate, KÃ¼rpick said. KÃ¼rpick will lead the integration of the companies' product development teams, where he expects managers from both companies will take senior roles. It won't be like a classic merger where "you own the body but the head and legs are gone," he said. He sees little need for layoffs as the product development teams are combined: "We already have an R&D force that is 50 percent low-cost, mostly in India, some in Bulgaria, so we already have a good cost structure," he said. Although there may be little scope for payroll savings, CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich expects earnings to improve this year as the two sales forces -- which will remain separate at least through the end of 2007 -- exploit opportunities to cross-sell the two product ranges. The combined entity's revenue will grow organically by 10 percent over the next 12 to 15 months, he said.