• IBM has established several SOA -related initiatives that leverage its strength in IT professional services. Many companies will adopt the SOA approaches
of their principal integration partners, so IBM's SOA framework will increasingly find its way into many real-world deployments.
IBM recently launched an SOA implementation framework, called Service-Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA ), that encourages companies to use professional services for internal and external enterprise integration.
Managed by the IBM Global Services organization, the SOMA framework guides companies in SOA planning, design, implementation
and management. IBM Global Services implements SOMA through reusable software components, best practices and business modeling
tools that it has developed.
And, IBM has integrated SOA patterns, processes and tools into its WebSphere, Rational and Tivoli products.
•SAP is also promoting SOA as a core theme for its ongoing product development initiatives. Many corporations will find themselves
moving deeper into SOA as SAP, their ERP vendor, adopts service orientation throughout its product suite.
SAP's SOA focus is on its mySAP generation of packaged business applications and on the underlying NetWeaver platform. NetWeaver
implements the vendor's Enterprise Services Architecture, which encompasses a broad range of Web services standards. Through
native Web services support, integration middleware and visual model-driven development tools, developers can built composite
applications that bridge diverse SAP and non-SAP environments.
SAP is in the process of decomposing its monolithic R/3 and mySAP application suites into functions that can be exposed as
modular business services. By 2007, all SAP application functionality will be exposed through WSDL and registered within a
UDDI registry native to NetWeaver, making SAP's product portfolio thoroughly SOA-enabled.
• Systinet , a leading vendor of UDDI registries, has developed a framework that stresses the central role of registries in policy-based
SOA. Systinet's Governance Interoperability Framework (GIF) positions the SOA registry as the principal policy-management
platform for service composition, integration, security, management and other governance functions.
Systinet has gained support for GIF from many Web services management business partners, including Actional, AmberPoint, DataPower,
Layer 7, Reactivity and Service Integrity. For several years, Systinet has been a vanguard vendor in Web services and SOA,
so these partnerships should be interpreted as strong industry support for GIF as a basis for SOA governance.
• Infravio is a Web services management and Web services registry vendor with its own SOA framework, which it calls "Intentional SOA."
Basically, Infravio's framework is a checklist that companies can use to determine their requirements and readiness for SOA,
Web services, Web services management and registries. One of the most useful features of Infravio's Intentional SOA white
paper is that it clearly delineates the various Web services standards that will be necessary for a layered, full-function,
platform-agnostic SOA. In this regard, Infravio is like many vendors, whose Web services and SOA strategies are one and the
same.
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