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SOA In a Day at India's Most Influential Business Technology Conference

2010-07-18T22:28:00Z

SOA In a Day at India's Most Influential Business Technology Conference

Business Technology Summit 2010 – India's First, Largest and Single-most Inspirational Technology Show

Bangalore, July 12, 2010: [@PR2WEB] - Businesses are organizing themselves with Service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA moved from exploration and experimentation to pilots and deployment, with businesses understanding that SOA adoption betters data integration, enables legacy application integration,improves flexibility of application development, integrates dissimilar,departmental applications and reduces costs. SOA is addressed in a full-day conference at the 2010 edition of Business Technology Summit. The summit will beheld 12 November at the NIMHANS Convention Centre in Bangalore.

Centered on the theme Shaping Your Enterprise for New Business Realities, the third edition of India's annual summit for business technologies features two important and relevant tracks – SOA (12 Nov) and Cloud Computing (11 Nov) – to empower you with the necessary know-how for your applications and your company to prosper in this climate, now and into the future. The following tracks are covered in the SOA conference on 12 November:

•    BPM in Practice: in this track, learn how to harness BPM as an essential part of an overall strategy that touches both the IT function and the operational imperative. You will learn about Process Discovery and Modelling, Process Execution, Process Monitoring and Optimisation, among others.
•    SOA Case Studies: you will learn from the wisdom, experience and passion of expert SOA practitioners who have been there and done it all too well. If you believe there is no alternative for actual experience, this is the track for you.
•    SOA Integration: this track discusses how SOA and related technologies - middleware, application integration, BPM, BAM, governance technology, application platforms, application development tools, data integration, MDM, multi enterprise B2B tools and services, Web 2.0, cloud and others - can help your organization efficiently support the challenges and leverage the opportunities ahead.
•    SOA Deployment & Management: successful SOA Deployment Requires Effective SOA Management. In this track you will learn about balancing flexibility and control within an SOA, managing SOA application service levels, performance and availability, among others. You will also learn how combining SOA governance with time tested techniques of managing applications enables you to achieve the increased flexibility and decreased cost that you need from your SOA initiative.

For detail on the topics, visit the summit home: http://bit.ly/soaconference. For the type of topics and speakers at Business Technology Summit, please look up the agenda for the 2009 and 2008 editions. To register with 85% discounts at Rs. 499,visit: http://bit.ly/btsregister

About Business Technology Summit

Business Technology Summit is the single most inspirational, informative and valuable event of the year for those recognise that the overall business network benefits when business technologies are made integral to the overall value equation. It offer the best chance to refresh,pick up new tips and techniques, and network with your peers to find solutions to the most pressing business technology issues today. Each year, the summit is attended by a serious audience of over thousand lively and thought-provoking IT practitioners and business leaders.

With outstanding education sessions,powerhouse speakers, and demand-driven content BTS 2010 offers cloud and SOA vendors a great way to maximize their company's visibility and maintain a heightened profile, before during and after the summit. For details on attendee demographics, products and services invited for participation, and expo floor plan, please visit www.btsummit.com/sponsorship.html.

Follow the summit on Twitter, here: http://twitter.com/btsummit.

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

IT RESOURCE NETWORK

THE CLOUD NETWORK | THE BPM NETWORK | THE SAAS NETWORK | THE SOA NETWORK | WEB 2.0 NETWORK

Defense information systems agency uses HP Software to optimize SOA interoperability

2009-06-04T12:18:00Z

Defense information systems agency uses HP Software to optimize SOA interoperability

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 9, 2007

HP today announced that the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is using the company's software to optimize service-oriented architecture interoperability and to certify services across the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an approach to delivering IT services in a secure and manageable way that uses loosely connected, reusable and standards-based technology that can be quickly aligned to changing business needs.

HP Systinet SOA governance offerings, part of the company's Business Technology Optimization portfolio, help organizations establish a system of record to manage services throughout their lifecycles. They can help make sure the right services are in place to meet an organization's objectives and enable enterprises to speed SOA adoption.

DISA is a combat support agency responsible for planning, engineering, acquiring, fielding and supporting global IT solutions to serve the needs of the U.S. President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense and other DoD components. One of DISA's major initiatives is the transformation across DoD to "Net-Centric Solutions" to enable shared situational awareness and collaboration across agencies and make data immediately available to those that need it. As the central enterprise architecture group for DoD, DISA is using the tenets of SOA to enable this transformation.

Following an award in April 2005 to provide Systinet Registry technology to DISA's Net-Centric Enterprise Services Program (NCES), DISA selected Systinet 2 as the foundation for Net-Centric SOA governance to make sure that services can be shared across agencies. The Federated Development and Certification Environment (FDCE), based on Systinet 2, provides the policies, processes and infrastructure to allow services to be progressively refined, tested, evaluated and certified in increasingly rigorous situations leading to operational deployment.

"We have completed a successful pilot of NCES, our certification program, using Systinet 2," said Robert Vietmeyer, chief technologist, Net-Centric Enterprise Services, DISA. "Systinet 2 provides the visibility, trust and control required to govern a shared services environment like NCES. This environment will enable DoD to share better quality information more quickly, greatly strengthening the capabilities of members of the armed forces, policy makers and those who assist in their missions."

Merlin Technical Solutions, an 8(a) veteran-owned small business software reseller and services provider, helped secure this contract.

HP offers SOA services to help customers at any point along the SOA lifecycle, including the design, build, integration, management and evolution of their SOA environment. HP Services also collaborates with technology partners such as BEA Systems, JBoss, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP to offer customers choice and flexibility.

More information about HP Software SOA offerings is available at www.hp.com/go/soa.

About HP

HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers â€“ from individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world's largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $97.1 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2007. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including the expected benefits and costs of the transaction; management plans relating to the transaction; any projections of earnings, revenues, synergies, accretion, margins or other financial items; any statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations, including the execution of integration plans; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected benefits may not materialize as expected; that the parties are unable to successfully implement integration strategies; and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the risks described in HP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2007 and other reports filed after HP's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2006. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

IT RESOURCE NETWORK

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AmberPoint Achieves RSA Secured® Partner Program Certification

2009-06-02T12:19:00Z

AmberPoint Achieves RSA Secured® Partner Program Certification

Proven Interoperability between AmberPoint Management System and RSA^® Access Manager Helps to Bring Policy-based, Identity-driven Security to Composite Applications

OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AmberPoint, the leader in policy-driven management for composite applications, today announced that its AmberPoint Management System has achieved certified interoperability with RSA^® Access Manager software from RSA, the Security Division of EMC (NYSE:EMC). As a result, joint customers are better able to minimize risk and help ensure regulatory compliance by consistently enforcing authentication and access control across distributed, heterogeneous composite applications. The certified technical interoperability has also enabled AmberPoint to join the RSA Secured^® Partner Program.

“As enterprises deploy heterogeneous and complex applications, it is important to secure identities and access controls to protect sensitive data throughout the information infrastructure,” said D.J. Long, Senior Director, Corporate Development at RSA. “The RSA Secured partnership between AmberPoint and RSA will provide our joint customers with cost-effective, policy-based management and enforcement of diverse digital identities.”

The technical interoperability between AmberPoint Management System and RSA Access Manager will deliver immediate advantages to organizations deploying composite applications. Any AmberPoint authentication or access control policy—including fine-grained, role-based access control and more advanced attribute- and context-based access control—can now be enforced against new or existing RSA Access Manager deployments. Additionally, AmberPoint Management System’s support of RSA Access Manager single-sign on capabilities helps to ensure ease-of-use for consumers and administrators of composite applications. Technical interoperability between AmberPoint Management System and RSA Access Manager is similarly policy-based and requires no coding or custom configuration to implement and deploy.

“We see the combination of our security capabilities and RSA Access Manager’s identity and access management as a very powerful best-of-breed security solution,” said Andrew Brown, Director of Security Product Strategy at AmberPoint. “As a result of our work with RSA, our joint customers can immediately begin applying their existing enterprise identity capabilities to their applications.”

Benefits of the Product Interoperability:

Helps to minimize the risk of deploying composite applications
Helps enable organizations to comply with industry regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA
Provides greater ease of use for consumers and administrators of composite applications

About the RSA Secured Partner Program

The RSA Secured Partner Program is one of the largest alliance programs of its type, bringing over a dozen years of experience and hundreds of complementary solutions together. RSA SecurID^®, RSA Access Manager, RSA^® Digital Certificate Manager, RSA^® Federated Identity Manager and RSA^® Key Manager certification programs bring added assurance to customers that the solutions they are deploying are certified as interoperable with industry leading products, helping them achieve faster time to deployment and lower overall cost of ownership. The RSA Secured Partner Program reflects RSA’s commitment to providing standards-based interoperability and mutual vendor support to customers using its identity assurance and access management solutions. For more information, please visit www.rsa.com/rsasecured.

About RSA^® Access Manager

RSA Access Manager software is designed to be a primary component of any identity management system by allowing organizations to provide secure access to web applications within intranets, extranets, portals and exchange infrastructures — with transparent, single sign-on access for a positive user experience. Enabling such access can promote improved communication and facilitate business with customers, strengthen partner relationships, bolster employee productivity and reduce support costs.

Availability

The RSA Secured certified solution composed of RSA Access Manager and AmberPoint Management System version 6.5 is currently available. For more information, please visit http://www.rsa.com/rsasecured/product.aspx?id=1811.

About AmberPoint

AmberPoint provides the world's most widely distributed and implemented solutions for governing and managing composite applications. Utilizing a policy-based approach to manage the health and well-being of services-based systems, AmberPoint enables its enterprise customers to better understand system behavior, manage each transaction flowing across their distributed environments, and implement policies that automate performance management, remedy exceptional conditions and uphold security. For more information, contact AmberPoint at 510.663.6300 or apinfo@amberpoint.com, or visit www.amberpoint.com for a complimentary developer's edition of AmberPoint software.

RSA and Secured are registered trademarks or trademarks of RSA Security, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. EMC is a registered trademark of EMC Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

Submit Press Releases to THE SOA NETWORK send to SOA@pr2web.com.

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

IT RESOURCE NETWORK

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MuleSource Positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant in Leading Industry Analyst Firm's 2009 Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets Report

2009-06-02T12:01:00Z

MuleSource Positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant in Leading Industry Analyst Firm's 2009 Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets Report

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - June 2, 2009) - MuleSource, the leading provider of open source service oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure software, today announced that it has been included as a "Visionary" by Gartner, Inc. in the March 2009 Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Governance Technology Sets. (1)

Mule Galaxy is the SOA governance tool that development teams actually want to use. Providing a full complement of SOA governance, registry and repository features -- including service and artifact management, governance, lifecycle and dependency management, as well as application deployment management -- Galaxy makes the lives of development teams and administrators easier, not more difficult. Leveraging a RESTful interface based on the Atom Publishing (AtomPub) protocol, Galaxy seamlessly integrates with existing development tools and processes, helping to improve collaboration and productivity of development teams with no need to learn complex new processes or protocols.

"Traditional 'top-down' approaches to SOA and governance have failed, mainly because they require developers to learn complex new protocols and adhere to new processes," said Greg Schott, CEO of MuleSource. "Today's successful solutions should integrate with existing processes and be easy for development teams to learn and adopt. Mule Galaxy is pioneering this new pragmatic approach, and it's great that Gartner recognizes us."

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About MuleSource

MuleSource® is the leading provider of open source service oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure software. With more than 1.5 million downloads and thousands of production deployments, Mule is the world's most reliable and widely used open source enterprise service bus (ESB) and integration platform. MuleSource delivers enterprise class software, support and services to the thousands of organizations that are using Mule, including industry leaders such as Walmart.com, Nestlé and DHL as well as 5 of the top 10 European and U.S. financial institutions. MuleSource is headquartered in San Francisco with offices worldwide. For more information visit www.mulesource.com.

(1) Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Integrated SOA Technology Sets" by L. Frank Kenney and Daryl C. Plummer, March 31, 2009

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

IT RESOURCE NETWORK

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JavaOne session presents Java 7 enhancements to OSGi API June 3

2009-06-02T02:44:00Z

JavaOne session presents Java 7 enhancements to OSGi API June 3

Who: JavaOne attendees who use or are interested in using OSGi™ technology

What: “Upgrading OSGi” Session TS-4966

This session presents the results of a prototype OSGi framework that provides a modernized API for bundles while still providing backward compatibility with bundles bound to the current API. Presenters will explain how the OSGi API can be enhanced by use of Java 7 platform features. Speakers B.J. Hargrave, IBM, and Peter Kriens, aQute, produced the prototype OSGi framework.

Additionally, a birds of a feather (BOF) meeting is scheduled for OSGi users Thursday, June 4, at 8:30 p.m. in Hall E 133.

When: Wednesday, June 3

1:30 – 2:30 p.m.

Where: Hall E 134

Moscone Center

San Francisco, Calif.

How: Register at http://java.sun.com/javaone/2009/registration.jsp

Media
Contact: Alisa Hicks

        Global Inventures for OSGi Alliance
        1-775-720-5071
        ahicks@inventures.com

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

Submit Press Releases to THE SOA NETWORK send to SOA@pr2web.com.

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

IT RESOURCE NETWORK

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Sparx Systems Releases Much Anticipated SoaML Profile

2009-06-02T02:39:00Z

Sparx Systems Releases Much Anticipated SoaML Profile

Sparx Systems announces support for the SoaML profile in its latest update to the Enterprise Architect 7.5 modeling platform.

CRESWICK, AUSTRALIA -- (Marketwire) -- 06/01/09 -- Sparx Systems, a leading vendor of modeling tools based on open standards, today announced its release of new tool support for the Service Oriented Architecture Modeling Language (SoaML). The SoaML profile is now an out-of-the-box inclusion with the latest release of Sparx Systems' award-winning modeling platform, Enterprise Architect 7.5.

SoaML is a draft specification from the Object Management Group (OMG), which provides a metamodel for designing services within a service-oriented architecture. The specification extends OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML), thus enabling a visual and semantically rigorous approach to defining services. The UML profile for SoaML is of interest to business analysts, architects and developers throughout the process of establishing a service-oriented architecture. This includes the specification of systems of services, individual service interfaces, and service implementations. The profile also provides for automatic generation of downstream artifacts using Model-Driven Architect (MDA) approaches.

Complementing the standard SoaML modeling constructs, Sparx Systems has added two new diagram types to Enterprise Architect supporting the underlying SoaML concepts. Each SoaML diagram is linked to a specific toolbox, which provides context-sensitive guidance for SoaML modeling. Sparx Systems has leveraged its successful Model Driven Generation (MDG) customization framework to implement the SoaML profile. "Using the MDG technology, we've achieved a seamless addition of the new SoaML profile into Enterprise Architect's core modeling platform. It also paves the way for further enhancements including SoaML-specific model validation and integration with Enterprise Architect's Quick Linker for rapid model development," commented Ben Constable, Chief Operations Officer of Sparx Systems.

This latest release from Sparx Systems is a direct response to increased interest among its customers in SoaML, since the draft specification was published by OMG earlier this year. "The new SoaML profile adds to Enterprise Architect's strong support for SOA, and ties in with existing capabilities for modeling and generating Web Services, XML Schema and more recently BPEL", noted Constable. "We've built the SoaML profile directly into Enterprise Architect, making it available to users of the Corporate edition and above. So this is in keeping with our tradition of delivering affordably priced, high-end modeling tools," he explained.

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect version 7.5 (Build 845) together with built-in SoaML support, is immediately available for download and evaluation from:

http://www.sparxsystems.com/products/ea/trial.html

About Sparx Systems

Sparx Systems (www.sparxsystems.com) specializes in high performance and scalable visual modeling tools for the planning, design and construction of software intensive systems.

With customers in industries ranging from aerospace and automotive engineering to finance, defense, government, entertainment and telecommunications, Sparx Systems is a leading vendor of innovative solutions based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its related specifications. A Contributing Member of the Object Management Group (OMG), Sparx Systems is committed to realizing the potential of model-driven development based on open standards.

The company's flagship product, Enterprise Architect, has received numerous accolades since its commercial release in August, 2000. Now at version 7.5, Enterprise Architect is the design tool of choice for close to 200,000 registered users world-wide.

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

Submit Press Releases to THE SOA NETWORK send to SOA@pr2web.com.

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

IT RESOURCE NETWORK

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Gartner Survey Shows 40 Per Cent of SOA Users Don't Measure Time to Achieve Return on Investment

2009-05-18T00:06:00Z

Gartner Survey Shows 40 Per Cent of SOA Users Don't Measure Time to Achieve Return on Investment

Analysts Explain How to Drive Value from SOA at Gartner SOA & Application Development and Integration Summit 2009, June 24-25 in London

Egham, UK, May 14, 2009 — Organisations must set realistic expectations, and identify a few numerical measures of success agreed with the business, to achieve value from service-oriented architecture (SOA), according to Gartner, Inc. A global Gartner survey of 200 companies conducted in the fourth quarter of 2008, found that 40 per cent of SOA users don’t measure the time to achieve return on investment, and 50 per cent of non-SOA-users have not adopted it because they cannot articulate and demonstrate the business value of it.

“Many companies come to SOA with excessive expectations, such as immediately achieving quicker project cycles, but users often are not aware of the efforts, resources and time needed to achieve these benefits,” said Massimo Pezzini, research vice president and fellow at Gartner. “Consequently, some SOA projects are perceived to have failed when in fact there are simply no well established metrics to evaluate success. Therefore sometimes the benefits are there, but people keep arguing how much better things are, and whether any improvement is really linked to SOA.”

“Under the pressure of technology vendors and with a generally too optimistic view of the possible benefits, organisations tend to over-spend on technology but under-spend from an organisational and governance viewpoint, so they come to the conclusion that SOA is expensive and doesn’t deliver,” said Paolo Malinverno, research vice president at Gartner.

To ensure expectations are realistic and accurate measurement towards goals takes place, Gartner recommends organisations initially focus on achieving just one key benefit from the list of potential business advantages of SOA. As the SOA effort matures, and the benefit starts being delivered, they should add further benefits and change or add to the measures accordingly. Choice of benefit depends on what is the most urgent or important business value that benefit can deliver, and how quickly it can be reached. The benefits include:

Improved Efficiency in Business Processes Execution - Isolating the business logic from the functional application work enables a clearer view of what a process is, and the rules to which it adheres. This can be measured by lower process administrative costs, higher visibility on existing/running business processes, and reduced number of manual, paper-based steps; better service-level effectiveness; quicker implementation of process iterative or of variants of the same process for different contexts.

Quicker Time to Market/Shorter Project Cycles - The SOA principle of modularity results in services than can be reused repeatedly from different contexts. This can be measured by easier internationalisation of processes and quicker adaptation of processes to several products; the number of new products per unit of time; a higher percentage of on-time delivery of products; shorter IT integration of merging entities; a higher market coverage index (the number of countries an organisation sells in, weighted by size of revenue/target market global industry revenue); shortened project delivery times; and number of projects completed per unit of time.

Enablement of New Fast-Growth Business Models – Again, SOA’s modular, clearly defined, and shareable system interfaces, coupled with better application quality delivered faster, enable system scalability that can lead to new business models, such as e-commerce and cloud computing. Typical measures are the number of new processes identified and improved over 12 months; new ways/channels for interacting with customers/suppliers, and traffic/number of transactions associated; shortened time of integration of business partners; number of qualified sales leads; decreasing cost of sales.

Shift in IT Culture From New Developments to Reuse - Services being reused can be developed internally and outside the business (e.g. for B2B document exchange, or to extract CRM data), and used on demand on a SaaS basis. Measures can include SOA's total reuse factor (the number of service consumers/number of services) is increasing; a decreasing number of new service requests to the SOA centre of excellence; a decreasing number of new services added to the repository per month; and an increasing percentage of programmers' incentives based on the number of services they reuse or on the number of effectively reused services they design (not on the amount of software they develop from scratch or maintain).

Lowering Total Cost of Application Development and Maintenance- This cost tends to increase year by year, except when disruptive events (such as a major cost-cutting initiatives) bring it down drastically, causing significant pain within the organisation. A successful and well-governed SOA project brings these costs down, with considerably less organisational disruption. This cost is already measured in every IT department, straight out of IT budget data. Another measure is the reduced number of staff doing application development and maintenance, or the higher productivity of existing staff, such as application development or maintenance.

“Organisations must measure and communicate the success of SOA projects continuously in terms of the positive business outcomes achieved or the negative business outcomes avoided. If no-one knows what SOA is good for, it will be seen as just another fashion wave, and the SOA project will be at risk,” said Mr Pezzini.

Mr Pezzini added: “Organisations not yet engaged with SOA should avoid attempts at building a long-term business case for SOA. They should instead justify initial and focused investments in SOA in the context of projects aimed at addressing business needs with short to mid-term paybacks. Incremental investments to extend their SOA infrastructure and to strengthen governance processes should also be cost-justified on a project-by-project basis in terms of tangible business benefits.”

Additional information is available in the Gartner report "Measuring the Value of SOA". The report is on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=833728&subref=simplesearch.

Gartner analysts will present additional insights into SOA at the Gartner SOA & Application Development and Integration Summit 2009, 24-25 June at the Royal Lancaster hotel in London, UK. The Summit gives the richest view of SOA, application development, application integration, multienterprise B2B and emerging trends available. Additional information is available at www.europe.gartner.com/soa. Members of the media can register by contacting Holly Stevens at holly.stevens@gartner.com.

Contacts:

Holly Stevens
Gartner
+44 0 1784 267412
holly.stevens@gartner.com

Christy Pettey
Gartner
+1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com

About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

Submit Press Releases to THE SOA NETWORK send to SOA@pr2web.com.

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

IT RESOURCE NETWORK

THE CLOUD NETWORK | THE BPM NETWORK | THE SAAS NETWORK | THE SOA NETWORK | WEB 2.0 NETWORK

Tidal Expands SAP Management Solutions Portfolio with Latest Version of Tidal® Transaction Analyzer for SAP Solutions

2009-04-09T12:20:00Z

Tidal Expands SAP Management Solutions Portfolio with Latest Version of Tidal® Transaction Analyzer for SAP Solutions

Solution Captures 100% of SAP Transaction Data, and Simplifies Audits and Performance Management

PALO ALTO, California – APRIL 07, 2009 – Tidal Software, a leading provider of application scheduling and performance management software, today announced Tidal® Transaction Analyzer for SAP Solutions version 1.9. This version is the most recent step in the company’s plans to introduce a broad set of SAP management solutions that provide automation, and accelerate problem isolation for SAP users. Tidal Transaction Analyzer captures 100% of SAP activity and allows users to access indepth reports on that data. Such visibility can help companies understand exactly how their SAP systems are being used, which can, for example, help strengthen security, and even simplify auditing.

Tidal Transaction Analyzer helps turn the data it captures into usable information through the unique delivery of scenario based self-serve reports. These scenario based reports are organized by areas of concern for stakeholders such as ‘show me poorly performing transactions,’ and ‘why, who, what, when, where and how often a transaction was executed’, and ‘chargebacks by business unit’. The scenario driven reporting fully supports situations that leverage SAP® Enterprise Portal activity data; allowing users to obtain insight to portal performance analysis, server load, and portal users reports.

“One of the best aspects of Tidal Transaction Analyzer is its unique self-serve capabilities,” said Susan Eustis, president of Wintergreen Research. “This feature provides operational metrics for the entire organization from the corporate office to the smallest department. This kind of insight into SAP operations is invaluable to getting the most out of SAP applications.”

“Enterprises today are challenged to get the most from their SAP environments due to the difficult nature of managing complex SAP environments,” said Flint Brenton, Tidal CEO. “Tidal is committed to providing exactly those comprehensive automation tools that will make SAP operations highly visible and manageable. These automation tools along with the Run SAP™ methodology will enable users to more efficiently perform SAP operational processes to address vital strategic business objectives.”

“Tidal Transaction Analyzer captures 100% of SAP ABAP transactions and Portal activities, as well as background jobs. Users are not required to write any custom ABAP code or to incur the overhead of retrieving large amounts of data using STAD,” said Wayne Greene, Tidal’s vice president of product management. “Tidal Transaction Analyzer provides an amazing amount of very fine granular data which can be leveraged by users to accelerate the problem isolation process.”

The metrics supplied by Tidal Transaction Analyzer provide invaluable data for compliance audits, capacity planning, as well as analysis of business operations, applications, and performance. Tidal Transaction Analyzer captures every SAP dialog and transaction, recording its name, who executed it, their organization and location, the response time, and the resources it consumes. It efficiently records this information in a data warehouse with no performance or footprint impact on SAP.

The Tidal Transaction Analyzer is a valuable tool to help IT understand true day-to-day transaction usage in order to determine what authorization to provide a department or group of users. It allows users to see what has actually been executed over a given period of time. This is important because transactional authority often remains in effect for years even when it is no longer needed by the user. Tidal Transaction Analyzer helps ensure that all authorizations are consistent with current needs without duty conflicts. It provides a very clear picture of overall transaction usage, and its graphical interface makes it very easy to use.

Tidal is planning additional announcements relating to Tidal’s SAP solutions in this quarter and beyond.

About Tidal Software
Tidal Software is a leading provider of application scheduling and performance management software that radically simplifies IT operations by automating and integrating performance and process management. Tidal’s solution puts IT operations management into the business process using new levels of automation, visibility, and control over systems. Tidal makes applications such as SAP®, PeopleSoft®, and Oracle E-business Suite™ more efficient, reliable, and secure to return greater business value. Tidal also gives IT deep visibility into and precise control over new SOA-based composite solutions consisting of packaged applications and custom components in Microsoft .NET and Java. General Mills, HP, ING Direct, Microsoft, and T-Mobile are among the Tidal customers who use Tidal to reduce operational costs by running IT at higher efficiency rates and containing overall data center footprints. Privately held, Tidal is venture-backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Novus Ventures, Panorama Capital, and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

For more information, contact Tidal Software at (650) 475-4600 or visit www.tidalsoftware.com.

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Software AG reports $1 billion revenue in 2008

2009-03-21T13:17:00Z

Software AG reports $1 billion revenue in 2008

RESTON, Va. — March 20, 2009 — Software AG today announced that it passed the $1 billion revenue mark in 2008. The audited financial results, published today in the company’s Annual Report, confirmed that Software AG has now passed this significant milestone.

“This is important for us,” said Software AG CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich. “Vendor size and financial stability are key decision criteria for customers making strategic IT investments, especially in times of economic uncertainty. Software AG has industry leading technology, is relatively safe from a hostile takeover and now has reached $1 billion revenue. We are now the largest independent and global business infrastructure software company.”

Founded in 1969, Software AG has been at the forefront of four decades of technology innovation from its first product, and still the world’s fastest commercially available database: ADABAS, to its leading webMethods SOA and Business Process Management (BPM) suite.

Further information can be found in Software AG's Annual Report at: http://www.softwareag.com/Corporate/inv_rel/reports/annualreport/default.asp.

###

Software AG | 11700 Plaza America Drive| Suite 700 | Reston, VA 20190 | USA

With more than 1,000 U.S.-enterprise customers and 700 employees, Software AG's U.S. operation contributes one third of the company's total revenue and is Software AG's largest market presence and R&D location. Software AG has operated nationwide in the U.S. since 1973 through a fully-owned subsidiary, Software AG USA Inc., which is headquartered in Reston, Virginia – also an R&D hub for the company’s core data management and integration technologies. R&D labs for the development of Software AG’s webMethods product suite – offering SOA integration and BPM solutions – include facilities in San José/Silicon Valley, Seattle and Denver. For more information, visit www.softwareag.com/us.

Software AG is the world’s largest independent provider of Business Infrastructure Software. Our 4,000 global enterprise customers achieve business results faster by modernizing, integrating and automating their IT systems and processes. As a result, they rapidly build measurable business value and meet changing business demands. Based on our solutions, organizations are able to liberate and govern their data, systems, applications, processes and services – achieving new levels of business flexibility.

Our leading product portfolio includes solutions for high performance data management, developing and modernizing applications, enabling service-oriented architecture, and improving business processes. By combining our technology with industry expertise and best practices experience, our customers improve and differentiate their businesses – faster.

Software AG has almost 40 years of global IT experience and over 3,600 employees serving customers in 70 countries. The company is headquartered in Germany and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE 0003304002 / SOW). Software AG posted total revenues of €721 million in 2008.

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SOA Security: The Basics

2009-03-16T11:33:00Z

SOA Security: The Basics

Diving into Service Oriented Architecture? Vordel's Mark O'Neill covers basic SOA security threats and defenses--and explains how security helps increase SOA's business benefits

12th March, 2009

It is tempting to launch into a description of SOA Security without first asking �Why?� Why apply security to SOA? One obvious answer is to protect the SOA infrastructure against attack. This is a valid reason, but there are also enabling, positive reasons for applying security to SOA, such as the ability to monitor usage of services in a SOA. We begin by examining the attacks against SOA technologies, both SOAP and REST. Then we examine how standards such as WS-Security allow policies to be applied to SOA, thus allowing controlled usage and monitoring and finally examine the security ramifications when an enterprise integrates local on-site applications with cloud computing services.

more...

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Tidal Software Forges Development Agreement with SAP to Integrate Tidal® Intelligent Automation Platform with SAP® Solution Manager

2009-03-11T01:15:00Z

Tidal Software Forges Development Agreement with SAP to Integrate Tidal® Intelligent Automation Platform with SAP® Solution Manager

Integration will help reduce TCO for customers running SAP NetWeaver® and SAP Business Suite

PALO ALTO, California – March 10, 2009 – Tidal Software, a leading provider of application automation and scheduling solutions, today announced a development agreement with SAP AG to integrate the Tidal® Intelligent Automation Platform with the SAP® Solution Manager application lifecycle management solution. This integration is intended to reduce mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) of issues that impact business. It will also help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) for customers running the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform and SAP Business Suite software.

The integration will enable Tidal’s Intelligent Automation to proactively receive alerts triggered by SAP Solution Manager and provide automatic resolution. Through this integration, customers can speed up the adoption and benefits of the Run SAP methodology, which can lower TCO and improve operational efficiency.

“We always seek ways to help customers benefit from the rich capabilities provided by the SAP Active Global Support organization,” said Marc Thier, senior vice president, Application Life-Cycle Management, SAP AG. “This agreement supports the value and adoption of Run SAP and SAP Solution Manager. Tidal Intelligent Automation integrated with SAP Solution Manager will represent a market-leading, task-automation solution for use with SAP solutions. It will allow SAP customers to further achieve their goal of operational excellence by leveraging the task automation capabilities of Tidal’s Intelligent Automation together with SAP solutions.”

“This cooperative agreement is very much about deploying process and technical integration to equip customers to provide a higher level of service to their businesses,” said Flint Brenton, Tidal’s president and CEO. “It also has the benefit of helping customers quickly adopt the industry-leading Run SAP methodology. We believe this integration will be well received by the SAP community. We are excited to be working together with SAP, extending our expertise with RunBook Automation and SAP solutions in this way. Tidal is taking administration to the next level by delivering application automation designed to help customers more quickly and efficiently adopt the Run SAP methodology.”

In these challenging economic times, companies are looking to be more effective and efficient in their IT operations. Under this development agreement, SAP and Tidal Software are joining forces to provide customers with the technology to support optimizing staff and the processes they deliver to further enable world-class SAP operational excellence. The integrated solution is scheduled to be available at the end of 2009 and will be individually priced by Tidal Software.

About Tidal Software
Tidal Software is a leading provider of application automation, and scheduling solutions that radically simplify IT operations by automating and integrating performance and process management. Tidal’s solutions put IT operations management into the business process using new levels of automation, visibility, and control over systems. Tidal’s solutions support applications from vendors such as SAP, PeopleSoft®, and Oracle, helping make them more efficient, reliable, and secure to return greater business value to customers. Tidal also gives IT deep visibility into and precise control over new SOA-based composite solutions consisting of packaged applications and custom components in Microsoft .NET and Java. General Mills, HP, ING Direct, Microsoft, and T-Mobile are among the Tidal customers who use Tidal to reduce operational costs by running IT at higher efficiency rates and containing overall data center footprints. Privately held, Tidal is venture-backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Novus Ventures, Panorama Capital, and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

For more information, contact Tidal Software at (650) 475-4600 or visit www.tidalsoftware.com.

# # #

Tidal Software Logo, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler, Tidal Horizon, Tidal Intersperse, and Expert-in-a-Box are trademarks of Tidal Software, Inc. All other trademarks are those of their respective owners.
SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.

All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

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Gary E. Smith
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Managed Methods – Boulder, Colorado extends deep integration for BEA’s Aqualogic 3.0, Weblogic Integration (WLI), and Progress Sonic ESB 7.6

2009-03-06T03:02:00Z

Managed Methods – Boulder, Colorado extends deep integration for BEA’s Aqualogic 3.0, Weblogic Integration (WLI), and Progress Sonic ESB 7.6

March 5th 2009 - [PR2WEB] - Managed Methods Inc. (www.managedmethods.com ) the leader in SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) visibility and SOA runtime governance today announced the availability of their SOA management and runtime governance support for deeper visibility for BEA’s Aqualogic ESB, WebLogic Integration (WLI) and Progress Sonic ESB 7.6. This capability expands the SOA environments that JaxView supports, including a wide range of support for applications exposed by ESBs , protocols and messaging and back end-databases and systems.

“We are exceptionally pleased with this release for the support of these integration and mediation products. Our customers are using JaxView in varying ways, from agentless visibility to security and brokering, with varying environments. ” states Al Aghili Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Managed Methods Inc.

“This capability really extends our ability to provide true end to end SOA visibility and control to customers using various service buses. We have found that every environment is unique as customers build services, however the need for visibility is a priority and JaxView is a lightweight cost effective solution.”

“With this release our patent pending agent-less approach will provide visibility onto all TCP and UDP protocols on the network and our agents can provide visibility into intra-container messages that never leave the server.” states Aghili.

JaxView agents for ALSB,WLI and Sonic ESB integration features include

· Visibility into JMS, SOAP, and RMI protocol messaging and transactions, including containers with Intra-Container-Messaging options.

· Performance, SLA, Fault and Transaction management functionalities

· Small foot print on the server (< 200 kb).

· Securing including authentication for the different protocol messages entering the ALSB (last mile security)

JaxView runtime management solutions provide visibility and control for entire SOA environment from the client applications all the way to back end database calls in a variety of protocols. The flexible deployment options allow JaxView the flexibility to manage every type of environment with minimum disruption to existing policies and platforms.

For a free 2 week evaluation of JaxView go to www.managedmethods.com

ABOUT JAXVIEW

JaxView provides architects and IT operations teams with practical, cost-effective tools for monitoring and managing standards-based (SOAP) and REST Web services. JaxView delivers agentless web services management, web services availability monitoring, and service governance. JaxView downloads and installs as a single package for ease of deployment. It is built on a thin-client, server-based application architecture that is accessed and managed using a Web browser. A fully-functional evaluation version of JaxView can be downloaded from www.managedmethods.com .

About Managed Methods - Managed Methods is a Web service management company that is focused on the needs of IT operation. Our flagship product JaxView is a easily installed and integrated. We have used our numerous years of IT operation experience to build a product that fits the fast pace and rapid implementation requirements of operations environment. Every aspect of JaxView from integration, metric engine, alerting, data persistent, and aggregation is customizable. It is easily installed and implemented with very low signature. In a nutshell this is a tool built for the operation by the operation. No matter what stage of SOA implementation you are JaxView can help you deploy, manage, and secure your Web service and J2EE enabled applications.

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Tidal’s Transaction Analyzer Provides Comprehensive, Accurate Data on Transaction Usage

2009-03-05T01:56:00Z

Tidal’s Transaction Analyzer Provides Comprehensive, Accurate Data on Transaction Usage

PALO ALTO, California – MARCH 04 2009, – Tidal Software, a leading provider of application scheduling
and performance management software, today announced that its customer, Tennant Company, has completed successfully, a comprehensive audit of global SAP transaction usage using Tidal Transaction Analyzer. According to Tennant, the Tidal solution greatly simplifies the auditing process and enhances security by providing a clear picture of transaction usage.

Tennant Company is a world-leading manufacturer of indoor and outdoor environmental cleaning solutions and specialty floor coatings. From a security standpoint, Tennant needed a clear and specific understanding of which transactions were being executed on a daily basis and by whom, in order to restructure and update their transaction approvals on a global basis. The complete and accurate picture of transaction usage provided by Tidal Transaction Analyzer allowed Tennant to streamline their transaction approval process.

“We needed to be able to understand real day-to-day transaction usage in order to determine what authorization to provide a department or group of users,” said Mary Burdorf, Tennant’s security administrator. “The only real way to do that was to be able to see what they have actually executed over a given period of time. The tendency over time is that transactions that a user once needed are no longer needed, but the transactional authority remains for years. Another critical point was that we had to make sure that all our authorizations were consistent with real need, and that there were no segregation of duty conflicts. Tidal Transaction Analyzer provided us with a very clear picture of transaction usage, and it was very easy to use.”

“Without Tidal’s Transaction Analyzer we simply would not have been able to conduct the audit,” Burdorf continued. “It would have required accumulating the data for a long period of time, then downloading it into a database that we would have had to define.

Then we’d have to spend a lot of time looking at the results in that database. The whole process would have been too cumbersome to do at all.”

Tidal’s Transaction Analyzer provides Tennant with all the transaction information they need right at their fingertips. They can access it at any time to determine if a given transaction is really needed, or what impact removing it would have on users who are assigned to it.

“For example, we could look at a particular transaction and determine that there were, say, 130 users assigned to it, but that it wasn’t currently being used by any of them,” said Burdorf. “That way we could be sure that removing the transaction would not have a negative effect on any of them.”Burdorf explained that before deploying Tidal Transaction Analyzer, we would have had to start with a blank page and guess which transactions a user really needed.

“That process is both time consuming and confusing,” Burdorf continued. “Without Transaction Analyzer you are truly working with a blank page not really knowing what a particular user needs. With Transaction Analyzer we can go to a specific business process area, say customer service, and see that they have access to 400 transactions. We can also see that everyone in the department has only executed 50 transactions. That allows us to clean and modify access completely within the actual rules and requirements of those users.”

Another important requirement for accurately streamlining SAP transactions is the global nature of Tennant Company. “We work in the main office here in Golden Valley, Minnesota, but Tennant’s operations are very global,” said Burdorf. “We have offices in Europe, Asia, and Australia as well as the America’s. They all use SAP, and they are all in the same system. Tennant has a centralized SAP instance servicing the global organization.”

“Without Tidal Transaction Analyzer, the global authorization role redesign process would have been overwhelming,” continued Burdorf. “The total redesign took about a year and a half to complete with myself and two contractors working on it. That may sound like a lot of time, but when you start drilling down into the details of a transaction you find yourself interviewing the whole department to find out what they have executed. Without using Tidal Transaction Analyzer, it would have taken at least twice as long, and I cringe trying to think of what tools we would have had to use to get the task completed at all.”

Tidal Transaction Analyzer allowed Burdorf and her team to greatly streamline the process. They were able to sit down with the managers of a department and show them all the transactions that had been executed. Then a decision could quickly be made about which ones they really needed.

“Having all the details so efficiently at hand made it much easier dealing with the department heads,” said Burdorf. “We had essentially done all the upfront work for them, so meetings with them were quick and efficient. That’s a very important requirement when you are dealing with business department heads because their time is so valuable. They’ve got to keep the business running.”

Burdorf explained that security is always the “low man on the totem pole” because people are afraid they will take things away from them that they need. The data from Tidal’s Transaction Analyzer allowed the security team to show them that they are getting exactly what they need and not anything they do not need.

“My experience with showing the results from Transaction Analyzer to department heads is that they were pleased with how easy to read the reports were,” said Burdorf. “They were also often surprised at the actual usage because they thought certain transactions had been used more frequently than others.”

According to Burdorf, the most important thing about the data generated by Tidal Transaction Analyzer is that it clearly showed that none of the transactions they would lose would prevent them from doing their jobs. The tool allowed the security team to not only see how many times a person had executed a transaction, but also when they did it to see a calendar pattern of need. They could also see when a particular transaction executed a particular program. This additional level of detail allowed them to include some specific customization of the approval process.

“Thanks to Tidal Transaction Analyzer we were able to complete this massive reorganization of transaction approvals in a very reasonable timeframe,” said Burdorf. “But probably the best thing about it was that Transaction Analyzer data provided us with the credibility we needed when dealing with company department heads."

“Through better automation Tidal has simplified the otherwise arduous task of auditing for security and compliance,” said Thomas Hooker, Tidal’s vice president of marketing. “Any company that wants to track and understand its SAP transactions easily will benefit from Tidal Transaction Analyzer. We invite the SAP user community to learn more about this product.”

About Tennant Company
Tennant Company is a recognized leader in designing, manufacturing and marketing solutions that help create a cleaner, safer world. Products by Tennant include equipment used to maintain indoor and outdoor surfaces and coatings for repairing, protecting and adding beauty to concrete floors as well as equipment parts, service, maintenance and financing. Tennant is headquartered in Minneapolis and has worldwide marketing and manufacturing operations. Company stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

About Tidal Software
Tidal Software is a leading provider of application scheduling and performance management software that radically simplifies IT operations by automating and integrating performance and process management. Tidal’s solution puts IT operations management into the business process using new levels of automation, visibility, and control over systems. Tidal makes applications such as SAP®, PeopleSoft®, and Oracle E-business Suite™ more efficient, reliable, and secure to return greater business value. Tidal also gives IT deep visibility into and precise control over new SOA-based composite solutions consisting of packaged applications and custom components in Microsoft .NET and Java. General Mills, HP, ING Direct, Microsoft, and T-Mobile are among the Tidal customers who use Tidal to reduce operational costs by running IT at higher efficiency rates and containing overall data center footprints. Privately held, Tidal is venture-backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Novus Ventures, Panorama Capital, and VantagePoint Venture Partners.

For more information, contact Tidal Software at (650) 475-4600 or visit www.tidalsoftware.com.

For more resources on Service-Oriented Architecture check out the: THE SOA NETWORK

Submit Press Releases to THE SOA NETWORK send to SOA@pr2web.com.

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Gary E. Smith
SOA Enterprise Architect

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GT Software Announces Ivory Service Architect 4.1

2009-03-03T12:26:00Z

GT Software Announces Ivory Service Architect 4.1

New Release Delivers Proven Mainframe Integration with the Most Options for Conserving Mainframe MIPS

Last update: 4:25 p.m. EST March 2, 2009

ATLANTA, Mar 02, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- GT Software ( www.gtsoftware.com), a leading global provider of mainframe integration solutions, today announced Ivory Service Architect 4.1, a revolutionary new version of its market leading mainframe service oriented architecture (SOA) product.

Ivory Service Architect 4.1 delivers numerous new features designed to reduce mainframe workloads and improve SOA performance. Ivory's innovative architecture, designed from the ground-up to deliver high-performance, secure mainframe SOA solutions, now fully exploits all three IBM System z mainframe specialty engines.

Ivory is the only mainframe integration platform offering support for the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP), and the System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP). Mainframe specialty engines are not governed in speed, delivering much stronger performance than workload run on the general purpose processor (GPP). Integration and SOA workload running on or exploiting one or more of these specialty engines does not incur charges against the mainframe's processing capacity, resulting in dramatic reductions in mainframe MIPS usage.

In addition to simply supporting specialty engines, the Ivory Workload Manager provides intelligent routing to configure when and how workload is shifted to specialty engines. This feature ensures, on a service by service basis, that maximum MIPS are saved without sacrificing one bit of performance.

Additionally, the new release of Ivory delivers significant performance gains across all versions of the Ivory Server and Ivory Studio as a result of an intensive code optimization effort. Ivory Service Architect 4.1 also introduces full support for efficient binary XML, providing runtime performance gains across all versions of the Ivory Server. Additional performance improvements center on the processing of large XML schemas and orchestration of large Web service projects.

Ivory Service Architect 4.1 delivers an unprecedented array of mainframe cost-saving options that provide true application agility for mainframe SOA. Runtime flexibility engenders cost reductions and dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the mainframe. Early indications from the Ivory Service Architect customer base suggest a savings of up to 80 percent when leveraging the IBM specialty engine support over running the same workload on an enterprise's general purpose processor (GPP).

"We have been using Ivory to extend our core applications beyond the MVS mainframe environment. It has provided a tremendous business advantage, with a return on our investment in 12 months," said Nick Baguley, applications architect for Absa Group Limited, one of South Africa's largest financial services organizations. Absa's environment includes some 30 channels, which comprise applications, presentation styles, and platforms. "With the addition of specialty engine support in Ivory 4.1, we anticipate an even faster return on investment."

"The introduction and usage of IBM mainframe specialty engines is important for organizations managing MIPS growth as they continue to leverage this powerful and reliable platform" said Dale Vecchio, Gartner Research vice president. "Perhaps one of the most important drivers for adoption of these engines can be mainframe ISVs who can ensure that the workload associated with their applications and tools will not initiate a ripple effect of software cost increases. This adoption is important to the mainframe's future viability within an organization's IT infrastructure."

"Ivory has long been known for unparalleled ease-of-use and unprecedented choice in terms of leveraging mainframe subsystems - CICS, IMS, CA IDEAL, CA IDMS, batch and data," said Rob Morris, chief strategy officer for GT Software. "Using Ivory Service Architect 4.1, organizations can choose how and where to leverage specialty engines to conserve integration-related MIPS. Since most organizations are generally undecided on which engines are strategic, Ivory also allows the ability choose an option today, say zAAP, and change your mind tomorrow, say to IFL, without any redevelopment. It's this new level of risk avoidance and flexibility that makes Ivory the perfect fit as the most cost effective mainframe integration tool on the market today."

Ivory supports deployment of mainframe-based Web services across the widest range of platforms, giving organizations broad flexibility in where they choose to house SOA-related workload. No other solution on the market today offers such a variety of options for mainframe SOA. Without requiring any changes to the service definition, Ivory Service Architect supports the deployment of mainframe-based Web services across z/VSE, z/OS, CICS, IMS, Windows, Wintel, and Linux. Key benefits of this broader platform support include the ability to shift SOA-related workload off the mainframe, as well as the ability to leverage new mainframe MIPS-reducing hardware such as IFL processors with zLinux.

About GT Software

GT Software is a leading global provider of proven, cost-effective mainframe integration and data access solutions that enable companies to maximize the value of their technology investments without significantly increasing costs. With GT Software's products, mainframe developers can quickly and easily model, automate, and extend mainframe processes for deployment as key components of an enterprise SOA solution. With more than 2,000 installations worldwide, GT Software provides high-quality, innovative and cost-effective solutions for many FORTUNE 1000 companies.

For more information visit: www.gtsoftware.com

SOURCE: GT Software

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SSP Awarded Major Insurance Company Contract

2009-03-02T01:54:00Z

SSP Awarded Major Insurance Company Contract

[PR2WEB] - 25 February 2009: SSP has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract by Absa, one of the largest financial services companies in South Africa, to provide its core insurance IT platform across its entire general and life insurance business. The initial five year contract will generate SSP over $20m in licence fees, services, support and maintenance revenues.

Absa will become the first insurer to implement SSP’s new general insurance solution Insure^J, which will eventually replace four legacy systems and support over 1,000 employees and several million policies. SSP will be responsible for the entire solution delivery, which will see Insure^J supporting a variety of traditional and electronic distribution channels, including bancassurance, insurance brokers and the Internet. The solution will support a wide range of insurance products, including, home, motor, commercial lines, personal accident and life, with the first set of products going live in 16 months.

Following a thorough evaluation of the IT solutions available, including solutions from global IT consultancies and other software companies, Absa selected SSP’s Insure^J solution. Designed to replace legacy technology, Insure^J is a component-based system which consists of several independent pure Java EE Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) components, which give insurers unprecedented freedom to integrate with other systems. These components include customer management, policy administration, claims management, reinsurance and product configuration, which can be implemented individually or as a complete solution. Supporting all lines of business through the full policy lifecycle, it can operate in all geographical locations, as it supports multi-language, double and single byte and multi-currency requirements.

David Rasche, SSP executive chairman said: “We are delighted to have been selected by Absa as their technology partner for this major contract. This is the largest contract in SSP’s history and one of the most significant international agreements in the global insurance marketplace in the last year.

Many insurance companies are spending millions of dollars a year just to keep their legacy solutions running. Legacy systems are not only a major source of costs, they are also a major constraint on businesses as they struggle to modify pricing quickly, launch new products or differentiate their service delivery. To realise cost savings and processing efficiencies insurers need to move to modern technology that can cater for all of their clients, across all of their lines of business. Most insurers have been slow to recognise this, however, Absa and like-minded companies will be able to transform their operating model and gain competitive advantage in their market.

Given the continued uncertainty across financial markets this shows the strength of the Absa business and is a huge endorsement of both the Insure^J solution and SSP. It’s possible that the global financial crisis will help focus the insurance industry’s attention on streamlining its systems.”

Willie Lategan, executive director at Absa said: “The speed of change in the insurance marketplace continues to increase as does the pressures on IT costs. By replacing four outdated and inefficient systems with one modern, flexible system we’re reducing costs as well as increasing productivity across the business – from sales right through to administration and customer service through the elimination of re-keying, due to straight through processing.

Insure^J will allow us to automate our business processes to ensure they are streamlined and efficient, to launch innovative products to market quickly and enable us to move into a wider range of distribution channels.

SSP offered the strongest proposition for us. The functionality and flexibility of the system were key considerations, but equally we needed the support of an experienced partner with a strong reputation for delivering solutions and with local presence. SSP specialises in insurance IT and has an inherent understanding of our business and worldwide insurance markets.”

-ends-

Editor’s Notes:

For more information about SSP, please call Daniel Fletcher on 0121 7798334 or email daniel.fletcher@ssp-uk.com.

SSP

SSP is the international expert with the broadest spectrum of knowledge, talent & technology for insurance & financial services, dedicated to long-term business advantage through complete solutions.

International Expert – offices in all the key commercial continents supporting over 45,000 insurance & financial services professionals in over 50 countries.

Agile – offering brokers, insurers & financial advisers of all sizes the benefits & security of a global business with the flexibility of a local provider.

Broadest Spectrum of Knowledge, Talent & Technology – With over 25 years experience of insurance & financial services & 800+ of the most talented IT professionals, SSP is placed perfectly to offer the widest choice of solutions across multiple IT platforms from IBM, Microsoft or Oracle.

Long-term Business Advantage – SSP works closely with its clients to build long-lasting relationships; many have remained loyal to SSP for 15 years or more with over 60% having been with SSP for over eight years.

Complete Solutions – offering more than just products, SSP has a proven track record & a commitment to delivery, giving customers peace-of-mind. 20 of the top 50 global insurers, 30 of the top 50 UK brokers & 4 of the top 10 UK financial advisers trust SSP to look after their businesses.

www.ssp-worldwide.com

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