System Vendors Sight SOA

But, against the backdrop of all this hype, Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink warns that users should not be blinded by all the SOA spiel. “There’s a dirty little secret of SOA,” he says. “Most companies don’t need to buy that much more software to do it.”

Bloomberg believes that, in many cases, users can rely on their existing middleware deployments to develop an SOA environment. “SOA is architecture; it’s a set of best practices,” he says. “You can get that pretty much in any middleware that you already have.”

But users may need new software for more specialist tasks such as metadata management, services management, process management, and identity and access management, he adds.

The other major challenge users face as they roll out their SOA infrastructures is cultural, rather than technological, according to Bloomberg. “What you need for this to work is discipline.” This could mean, for example, working out which parts of the business own which parts of the project and addressing funding issues, he adds.

Read more at: Light Reading – Next Gen Data Center Forum

NetManage: Composite Application Platform with Robust Host Enablement

Incorporated in 1990, NetManage has built a deep host integration and enablement capability, with its Rumba host connectivity software, ViewNow applications for Unix connectivity, Librados adapters, and OnWeb Web-to-Host solutions. They have since expanded their offering to the Host Service Platform, which leverages OnWeb and Librados technology to provide a composite application environment with substantial host connectivity options. NetManage is now well-positioned to help companies implementing Service-Oriented Architecture to build composite applications that leverage heterogeneous host-based back-ends while providing diverse Web browser-based and Web Services interfaces to users and consuming applications.

Service-oriented hype to meet hard realities

“The issue is that architecture is a best practice,” says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink. “The tool set will get you only part of the way. Architecture is a discipline; you don’t get it from a tool. You need to know what services to build, how to build them at the right level of granularity and how to build them loosely coupled.”

“There is still some shakin’ going on,” Schmelzer says about the development of key specifications such as business process, management and reliability. But he notes that the core Web services specifications such as XML, SOAP and WSDL are “pretty mature.”

“Companies should be aware of where the specs are at, but by and large, individual companies don’t implement the spec directly anyway. They look for products,” Schmelzer says. “So companies need to put pressure on the vendors to collaborate and get these specs out.”

Read more at: NetworkWorld

Java integration spec shunned by IBM, BEA

JBI is essentially a set of interoperable software development kits that create a development environment on Java to help developers build a service-oriented architecture based on business processes, said ZapThink LLC founder and senior analyst Ronald Schmelzer. It’s supposed to enable the creation of Java code that could run on multiple systems.

“There are a couple of caveats,” Schmelzer said. “The JSR is not relevant outside the Java community. It’s only intended for use on Java to build SOAs. It doesn’t help mainframe (developers), Microsoft or anyone else. And these two notable vendors {IBM and BEA] don’t support the specification. They are two large parts of the Java community.”

BPEL, meanwhile, is a broader specification and is supported by the JBI. The inverse is not true, Schmelzer said.

Still, the absence of IBM and BEA is glaring, Schmelzer said.

“There are many non-Java business process-based specifications out there [like BPEL]. Why would IBM spend its time and efforts supporting these specifications only in Java environments,” Schmelzer said. “They will support wider specs like BPEL.”

Read more at: TechTarget

Sun Deal Targets SOA Development

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Waltham, Mass., said: “In SeeBeyond’s case, they have been talking an SOA blue streak for a while, but didn’t have much to show in the way of infrastructure that was truly loosely coupled, coarse-grained, and allowed for real reusability of services. The movement to a proper SOA platform will help them execute on their SOA plans.

“In Sun’s case, they finally can claim a major software vendor to their SOA platform, which has been mostly claims to date about their SOA capabilities, with little major customer or ISV vendor wins announced to date. This announcement should keep them viable in a market dominated by IBM, BEA, Sonic, and others who have been producing SOA infrastructure for years.”

Schmelzer’s partner Jason Bloomberg said he sees things a little differently. “Sun and SeeBeyond are still stuck with their Java blinders on the world of SOA, and customers can expect more of the same from them,” he said. “Sure, companies can build perfectly good SOA implementations on Java, but both Sun and SeeBeyond are missing the fundamental fact that enterprises look to SOA to deal with mixed technologies that are by definition not Java-centric.”

Read more at: eWeek

The ‘S’s Have It: Sun, SeeBeyond, And SOA

The SOA announcement, however, met with some skepticism. Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market researcher ZapThink LLC, said combining SeeBeyond’s proprietary integration technology with Sun’s application server and other components wouldn’t have much benefit to companies, other than SeeBeyond’s customers.

“I still fail to grasp why, given an SOA, any [new] customer would choose an integration platform that’s tightly coupled,” Schmelzer said. “And I fail to grasp why a company that primarily sells hardware, operating systems, and Java-based software makes a good vendor to choose to build heterogeneous IT systems.”

For SeeBeyond customers, however, Sun’s Enterprise System, which provides a Java-based SOA infrastructure, does give them a path toward an integration environment based on Web services, Schmelzer said.

The deal also brings some benefit to Sun, which has failed to attract major independent software vendors to its SOA platform, Schmelzer said. SeeBeyond, which had revenues last fiscal year of $137.8 million, is Sun’s largest ISV to date.

“This is really the largest deal for Sun, but it’s not a blockbuster,” Schmelzer said.

Read more at: TechWeb

Defections Rattle Java Alliance

“The spec is itself an implementation spec, so it doesn’t conflict with any Web services spec, but the implementation is sure to hit competition from IBM and BEA’s own business process offerings, specifically the WebSphere Business Integration and WebLogic Integration products,” said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Waltham, Mass. “So, this will prove to be a highly competitive area.”

Read more at: eWeek

Understanding SOA

According to ZapThink, an IT market intelligence firm that specialises in XML (extensible markup language), web services and service orientation, the first involves the use of an enterprise service bus (ESB) that connects independent systems via an asynchronous, message-oriented communications infrastructure, allowing loosely coupled, document-­oriented exchanges between the systems.

Read more at: Computerworld

Accenture: SOA as Strategic Architecture for Improving Business Performance

Professional services firm Accenture’s core mission is to improve the business performance of its clients. Accenture accomplishes this mission through a combination of business process expertise and technical consulting. Accenture’s technology roadmap offers their clients an approach to building information technology solutions and approaches that will meet the goal of business performance improvement.

Accenture believes that Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) will underpin this technology roadmap. They believe SOA will be the single dominant technical architecture in the future, driven primarily by the need for interoperability. As a result, they are recommending and implementing SOA-based approaches for improving the business of clients worldwide.

BPEL: Why Everyone Is Doing It

With this backing, and in less than two years since being unveiled, BPEL has become the de-facto orchestration language standard, bypassing a number of alternative specifications such as BPML and WSCI. Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink says “It’s a foregone conclusion that BPEL is becoming the accepted standard for business process execution. It addresses 80 percent of the need, and people are rallying behind it. BPEL’s a done deal.”

Read more at: Web Services Pipeline (CMP)