IBM Takes Another Step Toward Its SOA Governance Vision (Gartner)

IBM offers more products and services that support its approach to service-oriented architecture governance. Customers should expect improved guidance, but no one vendor, including IBM, has all the answers.

Portals and SOA (Line56)

The evolving role of enterprise portals in a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) world

In Brief: Infravio partners with Layer 7 on SOA governance interoperability (InfoWorld)

Infravio and Layer 7 Technologies (Profile, Products, Articles) announced the integration of Infravio (Profile, Products, Articles) X-Registry Platform, the company's SOA governance solution, and Layer 7's SecureSpan products for governing and accelerating Web service integrations.

Enterprise Service Bus Spotlight (InfoWorld)

Core to the IT infrastructure supporting SOA is the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which has proven to be a reliable method of ensuring success in building new SOA-based systems.
Learn more by visiting this spotlight, which offers a many informative white papers, Webcasts and more.

IBM Steps Up SOA Effort For Partners (internetnews)

IBM is taking service-oriented architecture (SOA) to its channel partners, hoping to find more placement for its distributed computing technologies in small- to medium-sized businesses.

SEEC, Inc. Provides SOA Based Initiatives To Leading IT Firms (be.sys-con.com)

Provider of Business Component Software for the insurance and financial services industries, SEEC, Inc., (OTC:SEEC), has expanded relationships with several leading IT consulting and systems integration firms, in providing SOA based and legacy modernization initiatives.

Credit Suisse Extends SOA Deployment With IONA (br.sys-con.com)

Credit Suisse has been using Iona Technologies software for CORBA since 1997 and now plans to give it a makeover based on service-oriented architecture principles.It has renewed a multi-year, multi-technology enterprise relationship for ongoing deployment of IONA’s products for the development and management of its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

SOA Vendors, Seagull Software and Ecensity Partner For Rapid Enterprise Portal Deployment (in.sys-con.com)

Seagull Software, provider of high-performance solutions that transform legacy business applications into service-oriented architecture (SOA) Web services, announced a partnership with Ecensity, publisher of Ecensity Presentation Server 3.0, a solution that extends the benefits of service-oriented architectures to the presentation layer. Together, they offer the most time-efficient method for transforming legacy applications into Web services that can be accessed from a dynamic Web portal.

IBM, Cognos Form Stategic Alliance For SOA Deployments (in.sys-con.com)

Cognos and IBM on March 7 announced a new strategic alliance to jointly develop, market and sell service-oriented architecture products.

SEEC: Service-Oriented Business Components for Insurance (ZapNote)

Abstract
The insurance industry continues to be a hotbed of SOA activity, due to their desire to leverage rapidly evolving business opportunities while maximizing existing significant legacy IT investment. To facilitate the movement to SOA for insurance, SEEC developed an extensive library of business components for the insurance and financial services industries. Their hundred-plus library of components offers a wide variety of capabilities exposed as loosely coupled Services that their customers can incorporate into portals, other applications, or business process management solutions. SEEC has taken a Service-oriented approach to architecting their business components, giving their customers high levels of reuse and flexibility as well as standards-based integration with existing applications, while at the same time enabling them to migrate off of legacy systems as appropriate.

Book: the business of SOA is… business (zdnet)

I caught up with ZapThink's Ron Schmelzer last week, who has just co-authored a new book (with colleague Jason Bloomberg) entitled Service Orient or Be Doomed! I offered to help him get it on the Oprah book club list, but he said he would have to get back to me on that.

Interestingly, the title, Service Oriented or Be Doomed! is very non-IT-ish, which means it will probably catch the eyes of non-IT readers, who may expect a general business-oriented book on service delivery. This is apparently by design — to an extent, the book is about business service delivery and transformation. But at its heart, the book's theme is unquestionably about better business through technology.

Merrill Lynch Selects TIBCO BPM and SOA Software (it.sys-con)

TIBCO Software today announced that Merrill Lynch selected TIBCO Staffware Process Suite and TIBCO BusinessWorks to drive improvements to the operating efficiency of the back office using business process management and a service-oriented architecture.

Adobe's Flex/Ajax Bridge Acknowledges Need for Coexistence (Gartner)

By releasing libraries for bidirectional Ajax/Flash interoperability, Adobe is doing what every platform and tool vendor should be doing: figuring out how to coexist with Ajax.

ZapThink Book Explains SOA for Businesspeople (Tekrati)

Those of us pretending we understand SOA and Web services can conquer our confusion in as little as 24 hours, according to Amazon.com reviews and delivery options for the new hardcopy book, "Service Orient or Be Doomed! How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business". Despite the melodramatic title, the book by ZapThink senior analysts Ronald Schmelzer and Jason Bloomberg is earning good reviews and rank.

Wicked Web Services (Line56)

Web services, which Wikipedia defines as "software system[s] designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network," have come to define online experiences, albeit behind the scenes.

SOA business integration platform (ferret)

EPICOR Software Corporation has announced Epicor Service Connect, a Web services-based business integration platform that functions as the central integration point for implementing secure workflow orchestrations within Epicor applications and with third-party applications to enhance collaboration and automate business processes.

IBM sets up SOA hub in India (InfoWorld)

Big Blue to invest $200 million a year to develop and market replicable components

New crossvision Suite Strengthens Software AG (Gartner)

Software AG's crossvision brings together new and updated products in an attractive service-oriented architecture (SOA) integration suite. But the company faces some execution challenges.

New crossvision Suite Strengthens Software AG

New crossvision Suite Strengthens Software AG

Software AG's crossvision brings together new and updated products in an attractive service-oriented architecture (SOA) integration suite. But the company faces some execution challenges.

New architecture or just new hype? (Financial Times)

Depending on whom you listen to, it could be the most important shift in corporate computing since the advent of the internet – or it could be just the latest excuse for technology companies to hype their products in a dismal market.

BEA Acquires Fuego (Line56)

BEA's service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy rolls on with acquisition of business process management (BPM) company

DreamWorks, HP Put SOA Into Action (LinuxInsider.com)

"This is just continuing the momentum. We are past the stage where SOA is hype. It's the right time for SOA. Now it's a matter whether or not it will stick and whether companies will commit to it. Success stories like this help," Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst with Zapthink, told LinuxInsider.

Learning Tree Offers Comprehensive Introduction to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as New Course (Business Wire)

RESTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 2, 2006--Learning Tree International (NASDAQ NM:LTRE) today added a new course to its IT curriculum entitled Service-Oriented Architecture: A Comprehensive Hands-On Introduction. During the 3-day course, participants will engage in a series of exercises under the guidance of an expert instructor for the purpose of gaining experience in modeling, designing and implementing a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

BEA Is on Fuego (AMR Research)

BEA Systems has acquired the privately held business process management (BPM) vendor Fuego for $87.5M. BEA expects to retain all but about 1% of the Fuego staff. Fuego boasts 170 customers, which are all referenceable, in a number of verticals, but is strongest in financial services and telecommunications. The Fuego product will be rebranded as the Aqualogic Business Service Integration platform.

Fuego CEO Jon Lauck boasted about not losing a deal to IBM or TIBCO in more than 12 months. This success plus the BPM platform, which provides stronger modeling and orchestration geared toward business analysts, are likely motivations for the deal.

In addition to IBM and TIBCO, BEA increasingly competes with the likes of Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft on selling the broader service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform. It is also critical to sell the platform abilities not only to the IT organization, but also to the business owners and analysts that will play important roles in defining composite applications.

BEA had BPM as part of its Weblogic Integration product, but the interface for the tool was Weblogic Workshop, which is clearly geared toward a developer/architect role, not a business analyst one. It remains to be seen whether the Fuego acquisition will be enough to give BEA the platform it needs to compete against these much larger companies, but this is clearly an important acquisition for BEA to try and keep pace.

© Copyright 2006 by AMR Research, Inc.

BEA Buys SOA Startup (byteandswitch.com)

BEA Systems today ponied up $87.5 million for privately held software specialist Fuego in an attempt to bolster its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) story and grab a solid base of big-name users.

In Brief: IBM readies SOA packages (InfoWorld)

Also in Brief: Intel to invest $300M in Vietnam chip plant; SOA, Forum integrate products; Ericsson sues Samsung in patent dispute; Sony, NEC to establish optical disc joint venture; Orange offers wireline service; ObjectWeb announces EasyBeans project; Fluke enhances VoIP with Visual UpTime Select update