Progress puts its Mindreef assets to work on SOA

“Combining quality and management capabilities makes a lot of sense. Governance quality and management all fit closely together,” said ZapThink managing partner Jason Bloomberg. “For the Actional tool to be competitive with the likes of [Hewlett-Packard], it makes sense to include quality.”

He noted that Progress Software is a long-term partner of HP and that Actional often works in conjunction with the Systinet registry/repository.

Read more at: SD Times

ZapThink SOA Implementation Roadmap 3.0

Download or purchase ZapThink’s popular “ZapThink SOA Implementation Roadmap” poster!

ZapThink Announces Major Update to Popular SOA Implementation Roadmap Poster

ZapThink, the industry’s foremost experts, advisers, and educators in the field of Service-Oriented Architecture, is responding to customer demand with today’s publication of the third version of its popular “ZapThink SOA Implementation Roadmap” poster. The company distributed over 100,000 copies of its first two versions of the poster, the first in 2003 and then updated in 2005. The latest version adds cutting-edge thought leadership in SOA, includes detail on architectural artifacts, and expands coverage of SOA Quality, Enterprise Mashups, and more.

Read more at: Emediawire

Progress makes another SOA buy

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with the SOA consultancy ZapThink, called the deal “a huge, positive move for Progress” via e-mail.

“Not only does it bolster their ability to deliver high-quality SOA, but it also helps to reinforce the message that SOA is not just about Web services integration and ESBs [enterprise service buses],” he wrote. “SOA is about changing the way we think of and consume IT capabilities, and to do so in an environment of high quality requires a robust platform.”

ZapThink expects other SOA platform vendors to move in the direction of quality testing, perhaps through acquisitions of companies like as iTKO, he added.

Read more at: NetworkWorld

SOA acquisition week: Progress adds Mindreef

Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink LLC., who earlier in the week said the Iona deal made good sense for Progress, also saw value in the Mindreef acquisition.

“Both the Mindreef and IONA deals are great moves for Progress,” Bloomberg said. “Governance, quality, and management are more important to SOA success than middleware is, so it’s a great sign that they’re adding SOA quality to the mix.”

Change management is a crucial piece of SOA that appears to be missing in many vendor offerings, the ZapThink analyst noted.

“After all, unless you enable broad-based service consumption and composition in environments of continual change, which is what SOA is all about, you can’t have effective SOA. It’s surprising that more SOA infrastructure companies haven’t made a deeper investment in SOA governance, quality, and management solutions, since they will rapidly realize that the success of their SOA initiatives depend on successfully addressing those issues.”

Read more at: SearchSOA

Mindreef: Scaling up SOA Quality

Maintaining the quality of Services and Service compositions as part of a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) initiative is far more complex than traditional software quality assurance. Organizations who are implementing SOA must manage quality across the full Service lifecycle, including design time, runtime, and change time, and furthermore, SOA quality teams must contain a more diverse set of people than traditional software quality requires. As a result, organizations require a new set of tools like the Mindreef SOAPscope Server product family to maintain SOA quality as SOA initiatives ramp up to full enterprise scale.

Free White Paper Walks You Through Hazards of SOA Testing

“Key Strategies for SOA Testing” is a 40-page handbook that walks you through the issues you need to address when testing services. It’s co-written by SOA guru David Linthicum of ZapThink and Jim Murphy, the vice president of Product Management for Mindreef, a vendor that offers tools for deploying Web services.

Read more at: IT Business Edge

Key Strategies for SOA Testing

When it comes to Web services and SOA testing, creating a plan is important to ensure success, trust and reuse for new services. If you’re willing to take the risk, the return on your SOA investment is huge… that is, if it is a well-tested SOA. Untested SOA could cost you millions.

Mindreef worked with industry analyst and ebizQ contributor David Linthicum to create a comprehensive guide for SOA Testing. This new, complimentary 40-page handbook, Key Strategies for SOA Testing, provides a step-by-step guide for defining your own testing domain, understanding your unique needs, and testing all components to help ensure your SOA will be productive and useful from the first day of operation.

Read more at: eBizQ

Mindreef Enhances SOAPscope Server WS-Security Support and Introduces New Role-Specific Products for Architects, Testers and Developers

“Mindreef SOAPscope Server has long been known as a strong SOA Quality and team collaboration solution,” said Jason Bloomberg, Managing Partner at ZapThink. “The new SOAPscope Architect, SOAPscope Tester, and SOAPscope Developer products provide organizations that are at the early stages of their SOA initiatives a cost-effective entry point with straightforward role-based products for everyone on the team. Later, as their SOA implementations mature, they can seamlessly move up to the more powerful SOAPscope Server to drive SOA Quality and cross-team collaboration.”

Read more at: Mindreef Press Release

SOAPscope Bubbles Up Into Quality Center

“Without the ability to automate SOA testing, the processes and procedures around SOA quality assurance won’t provide the same value,” said David Linthicum, managing partner with ZapThink and SOA Watch columnist for SD Times. “The integration with HP Quality Center and new test automation capabilities in SOAPscope Server will allow those charged with testing SOAs to become more effective.”

Read more at: SD Times