IBM begins another wave of SOA releases

PARIS - IBM released service-oriented architecture products 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 healthcare, insurance, banking and telecommunications -- automate processes using an SOA. 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.

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PARIS - IBM released service-oriented architecture products 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 healthcare, insurance, banking and telecommunications -- automate processes using an SOA. 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 healthcare package, for example, ensures that SOA applications comply with the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act for managing healthcare data.

The offerings stem from IBM's acquisition last year of Webify Solutions, which focused on the healthcare 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 US$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."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.