Briefs

IBM brings its SOA to India

IBM has announced new software and services to enable customers to quickly and easily take advantage of the growing market trend towards SOA. The company debuted several new versions of its new SOA-based services.

Called SOA Governance, the new portfolio helps businesses address the unique concerns that arise when adopting an SOA infrastructure, including measuring business goals, aligning IT to meet those goals, and tracking business performance.

Said R Damodaran, Country Manager, Software Group, IBM India, “SOA plays a strategic role in any company, be it a retailer or a manufacturer or a financial institution. It enables people to collaborate and innovate; identifying new opportunities is also possible. In India, the globalisation of the Indian corporate is happening at a rapid pace…this has given birth to the need for IT-enabled technologies to integrate applications for streamlining business processes.”

A recent Gartner research study confirmed that there is a need for governing an SOA environment. The study says that, “In 2006, lack of working governance mechanisms in midsize to large (fewer than 50 services) SOA projects will be the most common reason for project failure. The probability mentioned for this is 0.8.”

This new IBM SOA Governance portfolio draws upon IBM’s experience in helping customers to improve their governance approach. To govern better, their SOA customers can choose from numerous IBM offerings, including the recently-announced IBM Workplace for Business Strategy Execution to help customers measure the performance of their business strategy.

The IBM offerings include SOA Governance and Management Method, SOA Governance plug-in for IBM Rational Method Composer, IBM Rational Data Architect, IBM Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database, and IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository.

Commenting on how IBM identified this space, Jason Weisser, Vice-president, Asset & Integration Technologies, IBM Software Group said, “Based on proven best practices and third-party research, we have identified five entry points to enable customers to more easily approach and initiate an SOA project. These entry points include people-, process- and information-centric approaches, as well as connectivity and the ability to re-use existing assets. The company has announced four new software releases targeted at these SOA starting points, as well as a set of industry-specific models to support SOA. The company has also announced new SOA services.”

To improve business visibility and deliver a process-centric approach to SOA, IBM has also announced WebSphere Business Monitor version 6.0. The software provides an aerial view of the business and enables customers to proactively identify potential issues before they impact productivity. New features in WebSphere Business Monitor include business alerts, links to third-party reports that combine real-time performance and historical analysis, and scorecards to track the status and metrics of projects. For example, the software allows a business user to create an automated alert signalling each time a competitor makes a market-shifting move. The alert can be integrated with third-party research, customer feedback, and recommended next steps that could help minimise the impact of a competitor’s move in the maret.“For an information-centric approach to SOA, IBM has delivered industry-specific models to help clients successfully launch their SOA initiatives. The enhanced IBM Banking Information Framework and IBM Insur-ance Application Architecture models provide a set of critical processes, workflows and activities to help organisations re-engineer their business processes to implement strategic initiatives such as master data management. These IBM models, methodologies and services bring together key components to provide a single view of customer information, thereby enabling a successful SOA and enterprise master data management strategy,” explained Michael Liebow, Vice-president, Web Services and SOA, IBM Business Consultancy Services.

IBM’s new software that focusses on enabling re-use and easier SOA management is WebSphere Application Server version 6.1 and WebSphere Commerce version 6.0. IBM’s SOA entry points skills training programme, based on the five entry points to SOA, will also be delivered throughout IBM Global Services. All of the SOA services complement IBM’s software and appliances, yet are not a requirement for SOA success.

— Faiz Askari in Jaipur