Infravio Inc., a maker of service-oriented architecture (SOA) software, unveiled its next-generation registry today, a layered approach to more effectively manage the way users connect with web services.
X-Registry Platform 5, which company officials claim is the most substantial revision made to the product to date, adds governance policies, a standards-compliant rules engine and configurable layers that Infravio said will save customers time and money.
There are three different versions of the new X-Registry. The first, the Catalog Edition, is a record of SOA services. The IT Governance Edition targets internal intranet applications. A third version, called the Partner Platform Edition, supports third parties.
The three versions are being offered as a progressive approach, allowing a company to add-on and ease into SOA services. But Infravio officials said manufacturers will benefit most from the Partner Platform, which is designed around integrating external companies -- an important element within the supply chain -- and contains the implicit value proposition of SOA.
Platform 5 is focused on "perfecting end-to-end service lifecycle," said Miko Matsumura, Infravio's vice president of marketing. It takes into account that there are different user types: developers, IT specialists and business users. These classical user types are different in terms of their needs, Matsumura said, in an interview with Managing Automation.
But one thing they all need is a certain degree of access to SOA data found in the registry and repository. A repository stores things such as messages and files whereas a registry points to their location. Together, they hold SOA data that users need.
Also needed is security in the form of access control and rules around processes, which Infravio characterizes as governance. Governance is the process of managing changes.
The idea is that user needs -- called consumers in the services world -- are constantly changing. A business user may instigate a change in an application such as adding a supplier to the partner network. The IT department will need to deploy that change and test it for quality assurance.
The governance layer is not only an "insulating layer" to protect the integrity of the business data, as Matsumura described it, but it also eases the exercise of customizing each application.
In many organizations changing an application is a laborious process of configuring middleware and writing specifications. The Infravio architecture, however, which is built on standards from WS-I, W3C and Oasis, means changes can be made more quickly, according to Infravio.
The company also said that the investment return for managing changes at the SOA layer using a standards-based approach can mean spending 160 hours, compared with 3,000 hours, configuring an application. If a programmer was paid at an hourly rate of $100, for example, that would mean it would cost $16,000, compared with $300,000.
"The idea behind the SOA layer is that enables faster response to a changing business environment," said Matsumura.
But it is the governance of the architecture that will have the most impact, industry experts said. It is an area that many SOA registry vendors, such as Systinet Corp., SOA Software Inc., LogicLibrary and WebLayers Inc., are all adding.
Nevertheless, Infravio has a distinctive solution, observers noted.
"It is unique in that what they are trying to do is have these three layers that they are applying to the notion of how to deal with SOA," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at SOA analyst firm ZapThink LLC. "It is handling the configuration of services in one layer, like how a service is controlled by a policy, attributes or contracts. A separate layer manages composition, which is once you identify a service how you combine them together to build the application. The third is customization, which differentiates from configuration .... once an application is deployed, built and configured it allows enough variability that even the people consuming the application can change it without breaking anything."
The three versions of the X-Registry are currently available, with the Catalog edition offered as a 30-day trial version.