Oracle links business process analysis, SOA
622626
(InfoWorld) - Oracle is announcing Wednesday an enhanced version of its business process analysis software that enhances collaboration between process modelers and implementers. Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite 10.1.3.3 features "closed loop support" for business analyst and IT collaboration, sharing a common process model format with the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle said. The new business process analysis suite features round-trip engineering, said Amlan Debnath, vice president of server technologies at Oracle. "What it lets you do is share the [business process] model with IT," Debnath said. A developer, for example could make a change to a business process that would be shared with the business persons. Modeling of processes is done in the business process analysis package and then executed in the SOA Suite, which features an SOA execution engine that leverages BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). Business users can build and change business models in the business process suite while IT persons can view and modify these processes in the SOA package. Integration between Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite and Oracle SOA Suite includes linking of business process analysis, execution, and monitoring tools. Oracle's business process suite is the company's version of the IDS Scheer Aria product, said analyst Bruce Silver, principal at BPMS Watch. Oracle addresses the round-tripping problem in which business persons model a process and hand it off to IT, which then implements its own idea of what it believes the process should be, Silver said. Oracle has created an intermediate format based on shared metadata between the modeling tool and the implementation tool, which is the SOA suite, Silver said. "You solve this round-tripping problem now because the model is not just initial requirements for the implementation, but it's a continuous business view of the business process throughout the business process [implementation] lifecycle," said Silver. Oracle Business Process Suite is a component of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Platform. The suite starts in price at $5,000 for five users.
231752
The Eclipse Foundation is developing an open source SOA framework intended for applications ranging from enterprise environments to embedded systems.
480510
Hosted CRM company introduces a new framework for linking analysis tools to its applications.Image: Salesforce dashboard
503580
Work hard for the money IBM today rolled out 23 updated product and 11 professional services offerings for service oriented architectures (SOAs). Some use technology from recent and recent-ish acquisitions, Webify, BuildForge and Bowstreet.â¦
396912
InfoWorld - The Eclipse Foundation with its Swordfish project is developing an open source SOA framework intended for applications ranging from enterprise environments to embedded systems.
425481
(InfoWorld) - As Oracle executives patted themselves on the back for their company's reporting another strong financial quarter, they also couldn't resist having a go at prime applications rival SAP. "Oracle had another very strong quarter," Safra Catz, co-president and chief financial officer at Oracle, said Tuesday during a conference call with analysts to discuss the vendor's fiscal 2007Â first-quarter results. "We had our strongest first-quarter license growth in more than five years by gaining market share," she added. Charles Phillips, co-president of Oracle, said the company had won 88 deals going head-to-head with SAP during the quarter, including customer wins with Electrolux, Lockheed Martin, and U.S. Steel. Some of the business is what he termed "winbacks" of business Oracle had previously lost to SAP, including a strategic win at Wal-Mart Stores. In recent months, the bitterÂ competitive back-and-forthÂ between Oracle and SAP has reached a crescendo. Oracle jumped on SAP's July announcement ofÂ lower than expected salesÂ and cited it as proof that the applications vendor's growth had stalled. SAP retorted that the results were a slight blip and not indicative of a major issue with its performance, which it believes remains strong. Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive officer, cites two factors that he believes are working in Oracle's favor over SAP: its Java-based middleware and its aggressive focus on getting industry-specific expertise and products through acquisitions. Ellison claimed that Oracle's Fusion middleware is "years ahead" of SAP's NetWeaver integration platform. "NetWeaver is still relatively new and still incomplete," he said. Oracle's so-called "hot pluggable" or component-based Fusion middleware strategy is paying off, Phillips said. Typically, the company sells one or two of its middleware components into a customer account with the hope that over time that customer will expand their use of Oracle's middleware. Turning to applications, Ellison criticized SAP's recent decision toÂ retain the current versionÂ of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, mySAP ERP 2005, through 2010 and provide new functionality through regularly issued optional enhancement packages. "SAP has delayed the next release of its applications until 2010," he said. "They'll be two full years behind our Fusion release." Oracle is working on a new suite of enterprise applications, known as Project Fusion, which is due out in 2008. By contrast, SAP executives have positioned the company's move to a more modular approach to product upgrades as being driven by customers' demands to pick and choose functionality. This quarter will be the last time Oracle provides separate database and middleware growth figures, Catz said. In the first quarter, database revenue grew 10 percent, while middleware rose 56 percent. In future, Oracle will adopt the practice of IBM and Microsoft and not break out those sales, she said. Looking to the second quarter, Catz expects Oracle's net income to grow by between 13 percent and 17 percent as revenue increases by 22 to 24 percent. She forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $0.22. Those predictions don't take into account any specific charges likely to occur in the quarter.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.
428479
Business Objects SA's share price surged in Paris Thursday morning, as rumors swirled of a takeover bid from IBM Corp. or Oracle Corp.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.
474596
Part 3: BPELJ and Compensation In this column in our series examining BPEL and its use within Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) systems, I'll will be looking at BPELJ and Compensation.â¦
721499
InfoWorld - Oracle is announcing Wednesday an enhanced version of its business process analysis software that enhances collaboration between process modelers and implementers.
521538
Treading on IBM and Google toes Oracle is beefing up its enterprise search, by offering links to non-Oracle applications and data repositories. The idea is to make it a compete more creditably in this fieled against Google and IBM.â¦
435523
Deepening its commitment to help corporate users create SOAs (service-oriented architectures) through the use of Web services, IBM's Global Services unit on Thursday announced the formation of an SOA Management Practice.
478993
Integration is a key factor with any large ERP implementation and ongoing maintenance, and Oracle Corp. is catching on. At its London-based OpenWorld event this week Oracle announced better integration between
538705
BEA has entered the event-driven architecture market with a product geared for SOA in Java environments.
316270
InfoWorld - With a new release of its business process management software available Wednesday, Tibco Software said it is enabling a tighter link with SOA and delivering a more integrated user experience.
404058
(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.
700836
(InfoWorld) - WebMethods on Monday will roll out the webMethods Fabric 7.0 suite for business process integration and SOA, adding a registry, metadata management and an AJAX developer tool. The suite keys in on business process management and productivity improvements, the company said. Included in Version 7.0 are component products such as webMethods Designer, which features an Eclipse-based development environment for modeling and managing business processes. WebMethods Designer offers a drag-and-drop composition tool for codeless development of AJAX-based composite applications. "[Designer] enables business analysts and developers to cooperatively design and build business process models from the services that are available within the SOA," said Marc Breissinger, webMethods chief technology officer. WebMethods Designer is part of webMethods for BPM, a business process management product that provides for the lifecycle of process development and management, the company said. In Version 7.0, webMethods for BPM features business rules management from Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor and a searchable metadata library derived from Cerebra assets. WebMethods bought Cerebra assets in August. The library utilizes Resource Description Framework and Web Ontology Language to establish relationships between IT assets, including services, process models, business rules and documents. This lets users find the right asset for a specific application. WebMethods Fabric 7.0 also adds webMethods Infravio X-Registry, serving as a service repository and offering governance capabilities for exposed services. Also featured is webMethods Infravio X-Broker, providing runtime monitoring, mediation and management of Web services in an SOA. Infravio was acquired by webMethods in September. Another highlight in the suite is webMethods Optimize, for business activity monitoring (BAM). It is being enhanced in Version 7.0 with richer business visualization, the company said. "[Optimize] allows you to analyze how well your processes are running in your production environment and also predict when those processes will behave abnormally," Breissinger said. With Fabric 7.0, webMethods unifies SOA, BPM and BAM, an analyst said. "Fabric 7.0 is impressive because the integration, SOA, BPM, and BAM tools seem to hang together as a usable suite," said analyst Bill Swanton, vice president of research at AMR Research, in an e-mail. "Most other vendors are either offering only part of this stack or are still in the process of integrating the various companies they acquired. There is a focus on the BPM capabilities, which is the real source of value in SOA." Enterprise service bus capabilities featured as part of webMethods Enterprise Services Platform will not be upgraded to the 7.0 release of Fabric until next summer. That product will offer extended support for specifications such as SOAP 1.2. In the meantime, users can deploy the new products in the suite with the existing Version 6.5 of Enterprise Services Platform. Prices for a single product in the suite begin at approximately $100,000.
62907
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).