Studie - SOA Platforms: Software Infrastructure Requirements for Successful SOA Deployments

SOA products are experiencing high growth, but the market is still focused on a low volume of high-value sales to large enterprises. A very large number of vendors are competing for market share by aiming to offer the broadest possible set of SOA infrastructure, targeting not just the runtime environment but also the analytics, governance, development and modelling.

Driven by competitive pressure and the eventual saturation of the high-end market, SOA technologies will start to become commoditised. The tendency for user organisations to deploy SOA to underlie tactical projects as an alternative to making a long-term strategic commitment to SOA will also have a commoditising effect, and will provide a viable market for some of the smaller vendors that focus on a particular niche. This will also influence the types of features that users will look for in evaluating products. KEY FINDINGS
• SOA is a form of virtualisation that aims to extend the utilisation of the functionality delivered by application programs.
• SOA provides abstraction that removes the complexity of dealing with many different technologies, exposing the application functionality as technology-independent services.
• Services in a SOA are invoked by sending a standards-based message, and will communicate their results in the same way.
• The SOA platform is therefore largely concerned with managing the flow of messages across the environment.
• The infrastructure providing the platform is responsible for ensuring the right messages reach the right service reliably, in the correct format, and with privacy and security appropriate to the message contents.
• The business value is achieved by assembling the services into composites, or automating the flow of services to provide end-to-end business processes.
• Vendors have approached the provision of SOA platforms from several different strengths and starting points, but are converging on an integrated set of capabilities.
• The SOA platform must exhibit runtime properties of high performance, scalability, and fault tolerance.
• There is a confusing and increasing range of standards relevant to SOA. The support of some of these is a fundamental requirement, while others are useful in specific circumstances.
• Business policy should be abstracted from applications, and different types of policy (business rules, process flow rules, security rules, service level rules, etc.) should be defined and managed separately in order to reduce the impact of changes.
• The system should record the dependencies between all of the active components (services, messages, rules, transformations, etc.) in a shared repository to provide impact analysis, and a history should be maintained to provide audit capabilities.
• The system should encourage collaboration between business analysts, system architects, developers, and administrators by creating an integrated development environment with bidirectional flow of information between all of the parties.
• Because SOA enables rapid change, and because the number of objects subject to change is much larger than in a traditional application environment, governance will be an issue and should be addressed by implementing an appropriate methodology as well as investing in suitable technologies.
This Report reveals:
?? The business benefits that can be derived from SOA.
?? How business benefits translate into technology requirements.
?? What capabilities should be looked for in a complete SOA
infrastructure.
?? How the Enterprise Service Bus concept relates to SOA
requirements.
?? Which vendors are able to provide a complete SOA infrastructure
capability, and what the detailed capabilities of these vendors are.
?? Butler Group rankings of the capabilities of leading vendors.
?? How different deployment scenarios impact the selection of
products.
?? The point-solution products that are likely to be valuable in SOA
deployments.
?? The point-solution vendors that should be considered.

Section 1: Management Summary 7

1.1 Management Summary 9

Section 2: Business Issues 15

2.1 Report Objectives and Structure 17

2.2 Background to the Need for SOA 18

2.3 Aims of SOA 20

2.4 Benefits of SOA 22

2.5 Risks and Risk Mitigation 28

Section 3: Technology Requirements for SOA 33

3.1 Differentiating SOA from Web Services 35

3.2 Overview of SOA Infrastructure Technologies 38

3.3 SOA Messaging and Mediation 40

3.4 Business Logic in SOA Message Flows 43

3.5 Administration and Service Quality 46

Section 4: Market Analysis 51

4.1 The Role of the Enterprise Service Bus 53

4.2 Overview of Current Market Status 55

4.3 Market Evolution in the Next Three Years 58

4.4 Anticipated Impact of SOA on IT 64

Section 5: Tables 71

5.1 SOA Platforms Features Matrix 73

5.2 Vendor Capability Diagrams 135

5.3 SOA Platforms — Butler Group Market Lifecycle Ratings 142

Section 6: Deployment Scenarios and Vendor Capabilities 147

6.1 Deployment Scenarios and Vendor Capabilities 149

Section 7: Technology Audits 155

BEA Systems — AquaLogic Platform 157

Cape Clear — Cape Clear 7 165

Cordys — Cordys BPMS 175

Fiorano Software, Inc. — Fiorano SOA™ 2007 Platform 185

IBM — IBM SOA Platform 195

InterSystems — Ensemble v4 205

JBoss — JBoss ESB and JBoss JEMS 215

Microsoft Corporation — Microsoft SOA Strategy 223

Oracle — Oracle SOA Platform 233

Progress Software — Sonic ESB 7.5 243

SAP — SAP NetWeaver 253

Sun — Sun Java™ Composite Application Platform Suite 263

TIBCO Software — TIBCO SOA Suite 273

webMethods — webMethods Fabric 7 283

Section 8: Vendor Profiles 293

8.1 Repository and Registry Solutions 295

Hewlett Packard 296

SoftwareAG 298

8.2 Rules Engine and Business Rules Management Systems 299

Corticon Technologies, Inc. 300

Fair Isaac Corporation 301

ILOG 302

8.3 Adapters and Connectors 303

Attunity 304

iWay Software 305

8.4 Emerging Full SOA Platform Solutions 307

E2E Technologies 308

IONA Technologies 310

MuleSource Inc. 312

Section 9: Glossary 313

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