HP puts more automation into SOA governance

HP is updating its service-oriented architecture governance suite with new features designed to automate the service life cycle, create reusable business processes and control unauthorized services.

HP SOA Systinet Version 3.00, announced Monday, is designed to govern SOA-style services through development, deployment, production and end-of-life, in various formats such as Web services, REST, Java and .Net.

SOA deployments are becoming more mature, and upgrades to Systinet will help businesses more quickly harness SOA’s agility and flexibility benefits, says Kelly Emo, HP’s SOA software marketing manager.

“We’re kind of at a point with SOA where the majority of the market really understands what SOA is supposed to do,” Emo says. “They can become much more agile in terms of utilizing the core capabilities they have to respond to business dynamics. The question is how they can get expected results faster, given that SOA introduces complexity.”

HP has built integrations between Systinet and HP Quality Center quality assurance software, making it easier to decide whether a service can progress to deployment, or whatever the next stage in the service life cycle happens to be, she says. If testing data shows that a service is ready for deployment, the software automatically gets the service ready for that step, eliminating some of the manual work.

More new features include:

* Integration with HP Universal Configuration Management Database, allowing management of rogue services in production.

* Pre-built life cycles and templates for non-experts.

* Wizard-driven, graphical and application programming interfaces for more sophisticated users who need to customize service life cycles.

* Support for industry-standard Business Process Execution Language, letting customers create reusable business processes and include them in a governance framework.

* Support for bulk operations and life-cycle cloning, allowing automation of repetitive tasks and simplified implementations of major changes.

The upgraded version of Systinet starts at $100,000.