SOA Vendor Matrix

Actional was acquired by Progress Software in 2006 to complement Progress SOA products. Actional focuses primarily on governance and validation to detect and report problems so customers can find the root cause. Actional generates process flow maps and snapshots of an entire SOA business procedure that are intended to help customers locate problem areas and realign them as needed.

AmberPoint specializes in SOA management (governance), testing and validation. The software, which works with .Net and Java, includes three key products: AmberPoint SOA Management System, AmberPoint SOA Validation System and AmberPoint Express. You use AmberPoint SOA Management System for runtime governance of SOA, EJBs, databases and third-party appliances. AmberPoint SOA Validation System helps developers create dry runs of services and validate how the services implement business processes. AmberPoint Express is similar to the AmberPoint SOA Validation System but focuses more on Web services. AmberPoint Express also helps the enterprise architect find bottlenecks and fine-tune performance.

The Cordys key product is focused on business process management (BPM). It is a browser-based suite to create, modify and monitor business processes. It supports real-time alerts, provides a graphical drag-and-drop interface for modifying processes and integrates enterprise-grade scalability, reliability and security through a distributed, fault-tolerant back end.

Elemenope is an open-source, Java-based enterprise application integration (EAI) service-oriented architecture and general messaging framework available under two licensing options: GPL and the Apache License, version 2.0. The elemenope base framework includes interfaces for complete SOA/SOOA application implementation, including JMS transport, intra-JVM transport, XML-RPC and SOAP transports. There is an extension for MQSerices/WebsphereMQ. The development environment plugs into Eclipse, NetBeans, JBuilder and other integrated development environments.

IONA Technologies offers an open-source suite of products called FUSE. FUSE ESB 4.0 is an enterprise version of Apache ServiceMix, a standards-based, open-source ESB. FUSE ESB supports standards such as JBI 1.0 and JMS as well as emerging standards, including OSGi and JBI 2.0. IONA offers additional products, such as the FUSE Message Broker (based on Apache ActiveMQ), FUSE Services Framework (based on Apache CXF) and FUSE Mediation Router (based on Apache Camel).

IONA bases its value on what a commercial company can add to an open-source project, such as accountability, a commitment to maintain code stability and documentation. It also employs many of the contributors to the Apache projects, giving the organization direct access to the experts who create the open-source software.

IWay products cover just about every imaginable aspect of SOA from business processes to SOA governance. But the most notable product is iWay's Universal Adapter Suite. IWay redefines the concept of reuse by providing adapters to tie SOA to legacy applications, legacy databases—and even terminal emulators. IWay boasts more than 300 prepackaged adapters, promising to help customers leverage their investment in products from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, BEA, you name it.

Layer 7 Technologies is concerned primarily with the enterprise service bus, and produces XML appliances and software to secure and scale Web services as well as enhance their performance. It focuses on standards-based XML data formats including SOAP, REST, AJAX and RSS. Layer 7s products include the XML Accelerator, XML Data Screen, XML Firewall and VPN, XML Networking Gateway and SecureSpan Mainframe SOA Gateway.