Chutney seeks to speed Web services

ATLANTA - Chutney Technologies, which specializes in speeding up application processing, is turning its attention to Web services with the goal of helping companies create high-performing applications without draining IT resources.

Chutney this week is announcing its Apptimizer for SOAP software, which targets processing associated with sending Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages among applications in a Web services environment.

SOAP is the transport mechanism for Web services, which lets applications exchange XML-based information.

The trouble with SOAP is that it can put a drain on application servers because each application request and subsequent response must be wrapped in SOAP for delivery and unwrapped once it reaches its destination, says Greg Govatos, vice president of marketing at Chutney.

Chutney eliminates redundant SOAP messaging, Govatos says, by using the Apptimizer software, which includes a storage engine that runs on a dedicated server typically residing next to application servers and application libraries. Once an application request is made, the output is cached in the Apptimizer storage engine. Subsequent requests then would go to the Apptimizer, freeing the application server from extra processing. Companies set rules to determine how long content remains fresh and when the application functions must be completed again.

The SOAP capability extends the Apptimizer so that it can store the results of Web services calls, reducing the number of SOAP messages that have to be sent and interpreted, Govatos says.

Companies such as SpiderSoftware and Xcache Technologies focus on speeding the delivery of dynamic content to servers, says Michael Hoch, senior analyst, Internet infrastructure, at Aberdeen Group, but Chutney is the first company he's seen that is addressing performance issues about SOAP. Customers such as Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Chase are using the technology, according to Chutney, but Hoch says overall adoption of Web services is still a ways off.

"It's a little early in terms of the big applications, but it's not early for the application designers and developers," Hoch says. "As the application developers start designing Web services and start testing Web services they're going to hit performance problems very quickly because . . . the protocols [XML and SOAP] themselves are heavy."