Vendors clamor to get their SOA messages heard

As enterprises become more involved with service-oriented architectures, vendors are lining up new wares to help. IBM, Layer 7 Technologies and Mercury Interactive unveiled SOA-focused products and services in recent days, and Microsoft staged an event to showcase how its customers are adopting SOA.

For sheer quantity, IBM’s SOA product news made the biggest splash. Big Blue unveiled four new software products, 23 product upgrades and 11 new professional-service offerings. Among the new products are WebSphere Registry and Repository, which lets users publish and find SOA services; and WebSphere Business Services Fabric, a collection of prebuilt SOA elements and policies that can be used to create industry-focused SOA products. On the professional-services side, IBM unveiled offerings aimed at SOA security, service management and virtualization.

The balance of new products and professional services shows IBM is aware companies can’t get SOA from products alone, says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at research firm ZapThink. “IBM fully understands this fact, and balances the best-practices offerings within its consulting arm on the one hand with a comprehensive product strategy in support of its customers’ SOA initiatives on the other,” he says.

Mercury’s product additions focus on SOA-specific testing and management wares. There’s Mercury Service Test, which lets users conduct functional and performance tests for services; and Mercury Service Test Management, which helps manage the process of testing new and modified services. Mercury also upgraded Systinet 2, the SOA governance platform it gained in its $105 million acquisition of Systinet earlier this year.

Having a tool set that spans the service life cycle — from design and deployment to run-time management and governance — is significant, Bloomberg says. “As companies achieve success with their SOA initiatives, Mercury will be able to support them from the earliest stages to full enterprise SOA rollout,” he says.

Click to see: Approaching SOA

For its part, Layer 7 introduced new iterations of its SecureSpan XML networking appliances with progressively more robust feature sets so users can license only the capabilities they need.

At the entry level is XML Accelerator, which provides document parsing, validation and transformation features. XML Data Screen adds XML threat protection, content filtering and traffic control; and XML Firewall and VPN adds identity and message-level security features. At the high end, XML Networking Gateway combines the features of the other appliances with tools for policy-based message routing, mediation, virtualization and SOA governance enforcement.

For easy upgrades, customers can purchase additional software licenses without having to swap out their existing appliance. “The innards are the same; we just turn on different functions, depending on the customer’s needs,” says Dimitri Sirota, vice president of marketing and alliances at Layer 7.

Microsoft, meanwhile, held its SOA & Business Process Conference in Redmond, where customers talked about real-world SOA successes. Microsoft also confirmed its plans to help companies link mainframe-based applications and data sources with their Windows environments: BizTalk Adapter for Host Systems is expected to ship by year-end in BizTalk Server Enterprise and Standard editions, the vendor says.