Accenture, SAP partner to build healthcare SOA
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(InfoWorld) - Accenture and SAP will co-develop software using SAP's NetWeaver integration platform to streamline the sharing of data among healthcare organizations and applications in a SOA (services-oriented architecture), they said Wednesday. The software, Collaborative Health Network (CHN) is intended to provide the infrastructure to link health-care applications together, said Ken Lacey, global managing partner of Accenture's Health & Life Sciences practice. The companies are still designing the software, but functions they hope to incorporate in the first release, due in mid-2007, include a master patient index, an index of health-care providers, electronic prescribing and links to pharmacists, Lacey said. Connections among health-care providers and the organizations that pay them, such as insurance companies or government agencies, will appear in a later version of the software, he said. The software, which Accenture is presenting as an optional part of its Electronic Health Record Connection Platform, could find widespread use. A number of countries plan to computerize health-care records and link systems together regionally or nationally, while others have already begun work on such projects. Accenture will initially approach health-care providers in Austria, Chile, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands with the CHN infrastructure software project, Lacey said. In other large markets, though, CHN will struggle to find a place. France is "already fairly far down the path to establishing requirements," Lacey said, making it difficult for Accenture to pitch a new approach such as CHN. The U.K. has already begun work on its system, which aims to link 50 million patients with health-care workers including doctors. Accenture has already the job of deploying part of the U.K.'s system, but in March reported that it expected to make a loss on the work as a result of delays in obtaining key clinical record software from supplier iSoft Group. Accenture will offer its services as systems integrator for the product, with SAP as software supplier, Lacey said. The companies will develop the software near SAP's headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. Accenture representatives could not say how many staff will work on the project.
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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¦
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Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday plans to make available a connector kit that allows users to easily link Microsoft's Office Project Server 2003 with SAP AG's ERP (enterprise resource planning) products.
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The Swedish engineering group Sandvik has signed a 10-year agreement to outsource portions of its human resources (HR) services to Accenture (NYSE: ACN). The outsourcing contract is part of a wider initiative ...
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InfoWorld - IBM said Wednesday it is expanding its broad SOA (service-oriented architecture) portfolio with the acquisition of AptSoft, a maker of business event processing software.
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The Atlantic project will allow users to access SAP's Business Suite through IBM's Lotus Notes.
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Curam Software, the leading provider of Social Enterprise Management (SEM) software solutions, and IBM today announced a new expansion to their strategic alliance to deliver human services, social security, and workforce services IT solutions to government agencies.
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The Eclipse Foundation is developing an open source SOA framework intended for applications ranging from enterprise environments to embedded systems.
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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.
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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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IBM said Wednesday it is expanding its broad SOA (service-oriented architecture) portfolio with the acquisition of AptSoft, a maker of business event processing software.
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EDS on Monday announced the formation of the EDS Agility Alliance with industry heavyweights Cisco, Dell, EMC, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Xerox. The partnership will be the foundation for EDS' efforts to regain momentum in the services business, where it has lost ground to challengers such as IBM's Global Services unit.
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Company's infrastructure software will be optimized to promote services-oriented architectures.
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Actional Corporation, a Web services management software provider, and Westbridge Technology, a vendor of security infrastructure solutions have announced the merger of the two companies and the completion of a round of funding for $12.9 million. The newly formed company, which will operate under the name of Actional Corporation, also unveiled the Actional SOA Command and Control Platform.
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(InfoWorld) - In separate SOA-related announcements this week, BEA Systems is upgrading its repository while HP is adding to its roster of "SOA Competency Centers." BEA is introducing a BEA-branded version of the former Flashline repository, gearing it to SOA environments. BEA acquired Flashline in August. The BEA AquaLogic Enterprise Repository 2.5 is intended to assist customers with governance in SOA, specifically in dealing with managing IT assets in these architectures. Information is maintained about Web services types and definitions, service dependencies and ownership of services, said Paul Patrick, vice president and chief architect for AquaLogic at BEA. New features include support for XPDL (XML Process Definition Language) and support for the BEA WebLogic Server 9.2 application server. XPDL is used for business process assets management. "The real business value that [XPDL] brings is you can connect the business process management activities with SOA activities," said Charles Stack, BEA vice president of engineering. While SOA deals with Web services, WSDL, and schemas, business process management is concerned with business processes and workflows. WebLogic Server 9.2 features zero-downtime capabilities, although this was first offered in the Version 9.0 release of the application server, according to BEA. BEA's repository also can run on the IBM WebSphere and Apache Tomcat platforms. HP, meanwhile, is expanding its SOA Competency Center program, with the company planning to open facilities in Cupertino, Calif.; Singapore; and Bangalore, India. The Cupertino and Bangalore facilities open on Monday; the Singapore site opens next month. The company in 2005 opened its first SOA Competency Centers in Sophia Antipolis, France, and Tokyo. HP bills the SOA Competency Centers as "comprehensive experience centers" enabling customers and partners to evaluate SOA technologies and implementations. HP capabilities in IT architecture, management, security and governance are showcased at the centers. Customers at these facilities participate in executive briefings, discovery workshops, and demonstrations and learn about horizontal and vertical solutions for SOA, said Terri Schoenrock, executive director for SOA with HP Services Consulting and Integration. Partner technologies also are featured and proofs of concept are developed. "For our customers, one of the key questions around SOA is, is it going to work for me in my environment?" Schoenrock said. HP anticipates the three new facilities will host hundreds of visits per month. The centers are part of HP's $500 million investment in SOA, HP said. To HP, SOA is "an architectural approach to business services that a customer uses to really achieve a business initiative," said Schoenrock. Concepts such as loose coupling, reusability, discoverability and service composition are considered critical.
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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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IBM said Monday that it is partnering with ACI Worldwide, an electronic payment software vendor, to create a payments system based on service oriented architecture (SOA) principles.