As increasing numbers of businesses look to modernize their IT infrastructures with service-oriented architectures (SOAs), the options for doing so also are expanding. For manufacturers, an SOA is envisioned as a way to streamline existing operational processes, or facilitate new, more efficient ways of conducting business, while giving the factory floor and the boardroom consistent, real-time access to data residing in disparate systems. While the uses of these new tools vary, one common denominator has emerged: they are helping manufacturers maximize ROI on existing IT and automation systems with a technical foundation that supports greater cost competitiveness, agility, and innovation.
SOA middleware aims to overcome some of the shortcomings traditionally associated with middleware by enabling code reuse that can support composite application development, while creating a seamless setting for applications to communicate in ways that engender radical business process transformation. SOA middleware vendors, regardless of the attributes of their specific offerings, are promising environments that can be implemented incrementally, and that tie together a web of legacy systems and modern distributed applications.
The chart below provides a top-level view of three categories of SOA middleware -- application platform suites (APS), enterprise application integration (EAI), and enterprise service bus (ESB) -- with two representative vendors in each. An APS is defined as a middleware environment offered in conjunction with an application server by well-established vendors. EAIs operate over centralized, "hub-and-spoke" architectures, while ESBs are based on Web services standards and are known for supporting multiple application frameworks.
| Company/Product |
Key Features |
What problems(s) does the product solve? |
What makes the product unique? |
IBM
IBM Web-Sphere MQ |
Reliable integration for applications and web services • Strong messaging backbone with once-only guaranteed delivery for deploying an enterprise service bus as the connectivity layer of an SOA • Enables increased business flexibility and helps with regulatory compliance obligations |
Safely and securely transports messages through any IT architecture regardless of source of application or platform |
Once and only once delivery of messages that are 99.99% guaranteed |
Oracle
Oracle SOA Suite |
Native business process execution language (BPEL) engine for Web services orchestration • Policy-based Web services security and management • Business rules management with no programming required • Complete human workflow management capabilities • Real-time monitoring of business processes and services • An enterprise service bus to connect existing IT systems and business partners • Integrated development environment
|
Improves visibility of events in real time and enables rapid development and optimization of business processes • Simplifies the IT environment by being provisioned, deployed, monitored, and managed as a single cohesive infrastructure • Leverages existing investments by being modular, open, and extensible • Can be adopted in a heterogeneous environment |
Comprehensive, 100% standards-based offering that addresses the entire SOA lifecycle for service development, orchestration, security, management, and monitoring • Hot-pluggable components allow deployment onto non-Oracle middleware • Supports Oracle Grid technology that enables mainframe quality-of-service levels using low-cost hardware |
TIBCO
BusinessWorks 5.3 |
Web services (SOAP, WSDL, HTTP) • Service orchestration, distributed messaging (JMS, publish/subscribe) • Multi-protocol message translation (HTTP, MQSeries, Rendezvous, any JMS) • XSLT data transformation • Pre-packaged adapters • Transactions (XA, JTA)
• Event services • Intelligent routing • Security, audit, and logging • Cross referencing • Exception handling • Native mainframe integration • Trading partner services • Data integration • Services governance (metadata repository, registry, policy)
|
Shortens time-to-market to: capitalize on business opportunities and create new revenue streams; execute on marketing campaigns; increase customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance; and absorb merged or acquired businesses • Enables real-time business where all relevant data is delivered to the proper users immediately for a more effective business response |
Distributed, bus-based architecture • Platform-agnostic approach to SOA reduces the complexity of maintaining heterogeneous application platforms (J2EE, .NET, C/C++, COBOL, etc.) • Event-driven SOA enables ability to process series of discrete events to determine relevant patterns and possible business impact for a more proactive response via automated or human decision support |
webMethods
webMethods Fabric |
SOA governance with an integrated registry/repository providing developers with access to all of the criteria governing service usage • Real-time service activity monitoring; this information can be used to ensure that enterprise-level SLAs for quality of service are being met and to guide future decision-making about the appropriateness of a specific service for subsequent reuse.
|
Coordinated use of business integration to link key systems and trading partners • Business process management to model, automate, and manage business processes
• Real-time business activity monitoring • Reuse of existing services and interfaces • Creation and use of composite applications aligned with business requirements
|
Common platform for business integration, SOA, and BPM • Business activity monitoring and support for composite application development, which allows users to more easily configure and deploy customized business processes, solutions, and dashboards |
IONA
IONA Artix |
Extensible, plug-in architecture • Broad platform support (Artix can run natively in environments from mainframes to mobile
devices) • Enterprise Qualities of service (security, high availability, management) • Utilizes distributed endpoints, vs. SOA/integration approaches that rely on a centralized server
or hub-and-spoke architecture
|
Reduces operating costs for organizations with complex and heterogeneous IT systems through the creation of services and by providing management and security to these services • Does not require a centralized hub • Distributed computing technology helps leverage and modernize existing middleware and other technology investments
|
Creates a peer-to-peer network of smart, standards-based endpoints using existing infrastructure
• Endpoints are configurable and insulated from the rest of the network so services can be extended, modified, and hot deployed without disrupting the enterprise • No need for centralized server
|
Progress Software
Sonic ESB 7.0 |
Eclipse-based toolset with process modeling, configuration, testing and debugging, and deployment capabilities • Advanced Web services standards for secure and reliable communication between services suitable for mission-critical deployments: WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Addressing, WS-Security, and WS-Policy • Continuous availability through Sonic messaging technology
|
Sonic ESB 7.0 delivers the SOA infrastructure needed to flexibly connect IT resources, regardless of where they are deployed, and to adapt to new uses including business process changes such as new business initiatives, M&As, reorganizations, and regulatory compliance.
|
Connects, mediates, and controls services wherever they are deployed • Delivers the scalability, security, continuous availability, and management capabilities necessary to integrate and control distributed, mission-critical business processes • Messaging technology eliminates the bottleneck created by disk writes.
|
| Company/Product |
What technical challenges does the product
address or capabilities does it offer? |
What is the company's SOA strategy or
model for its tool? |
Interoperability support for legacy
manufacturing apps |
| IBM Web-Sphere MQ |
WebSphere MQ is easy to use, with Eclipse tooling that enables remote network configuration, including MQ for z/OS deployments. The software features integrated support for Web services, helping users to swiftly bring reliability, visibility, and audit ability to SOAP interactions.
|
IBM SOA's strategy is based on empowering organizations to meet business goals by more closely aligning technology with the needs of the business. WebSphere MQ is based on the use of open standards to easily and securely connect different sources of information across a company as well as to business partners and customers.
|
WebSphere MQ supports nearly 80 platforms.
|
| Oracle SOA Suite |
Oracle SOA Suite provides comprehensive capabilities for the development, deployment, and management of an SOA. This includes the service-oriented development of applications, service-oriented integration of applications and IT systems, and process orchestration of system services and human workflow.
|
Oracle's strategy is to provide a comprehensive, 100% standards-based, and best-of-breed offering that addresses the entire SOA lifecycle.
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Oracle SOA Suite supports more than 250 application and technology adapters that enable access to applications deployed on legacy systems.
|
TIBCO
BusinessWorks 5.3 |
The TIBCO BusinessWorks suite is used as a Web services platform and ESB by enterprises looking to deploy SOA in order to accelerate application development/deployment cycles and reduce the cost of EAI. In addition to Web services creation and orchestration, BusinessWorks is used to wrap and expose non-standard legacy assets (e.g., non-XML data) as reusable business services in the development of composite applications.
|
TIBCO's strategy is to provide comprehensive support for enterprise-scale SOA that must also address the heterogeneity of disparate application platforms. Additionally, TIBCO's strategy is to reduce the complexity of services that reside in these various platforms to promote their reuse across departmental boundaries -- necessary for large enterprises to realize the full benefits of SOA.
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Integration can be achieved via Web services or through the use of a wide range of pre-packaged adapters to popular legacy applications such as SAP. In addition, mainframe applications can be integrated using adapters (e.g., with CICS or IMS) or exposed as Web services using hosted mainframe integration technology (e.g., TIBCO ObjectStar).
|
| webMethods Fabric |
• Web services authoring
• Messaging
• Registry/Repository
• Service management and governance
• Service and process orchestration
• User interface
|
webMethods defines SOA as an IT strategy for business transformation; it is not simply a technology stack, but a comprehensive approach encompassing best practices and change management designed to speed (and reduce the cost of) application development and business integration. webMethods also views complementary professional services and domain expertise as being equally important to building a successful SOA.
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Support for many underlying standards essential to SOA, pre-built adapters, and service-authoring tools provides out-of-the-box support for many applications. In cases where actual usage patterns do not justify the investment needed to service-enable a specific application, traditional EAI and B2B integration technology can be seamlessly employed as a component of the SOA.
|
| IONA Artix |
IONA's Artix addresses the challenges faced by companies that need to generate a better ROL on existing and future IT investments, streamline and modernize their IT environments, and lower their total cost of ownership. Because Artix is technology agnostic, it is ideal for use in IT environments that are running several different applications, on multiple platforms, and using several different protocols.
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Through its pricing and packaging, IONA offers customers the ability to begin with small, targeted projects -- where they can easily wrap their heads around how SOA can make a positive impact on the business -- and then scale accordingly. Going forward, they can easily service-enable more systems and add additional QoS, etc., without adding new hardware or other expensive IT resources
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Artix runs natively inside a wide range of operating and application platforms and bridges the protocols and data formats of diverse, legacy systems. In addition, for unique application specifications that are not met by Artix's out-of-the-box platform support, Artix is easily extended through its patented plug-in architecture.
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| Sonic ESB 7.0 |
Sonic ESB 7.0's advanced SOA infrastructure and matching SOA toolset address the real-world challenges of SOA that users confront once they move into large-scale, widely distributed deployments. Sonic ESB 7.0 delivers advanced Web services suitable for mission-critical deployments, moving well beyond typical checklist-level implementations.
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Sonic ESB's strategy is to provide the necessary software infrastructure that manufacturers need to simplify the integration and flexible reuse of business components using an SOA. Sonic ESB makes it easy to dynamically connect, mediate, and control services and their interactions.
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Sonic ESB gives manufacturers a way to build, connect, and manage new applications and integrate existing applications. Service enablement and incorporation into an SOA enables the seamless interchange of information among service-enabled applications and technologies and accelerates business agility by allowing the combination and re-assembly of important business functions.
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