SOA Vendor Matrix

Actional

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.

• Actional Product Family Data Sheet [PDF]
• SOA Governance
• SOA Performance Monitoring and Alerting
• Root Cause Analysis
• Aligning SOA with Business Goals
• SOA Security and Compliance

AmberPoint

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.

• AmberPoint SOA Management System
• AmberPoint SOA Validation System
• AmberPoint Express

Cordys

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.

• Cordys Business Process Management Suite (BPMS)
• Cordys Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

elemenope

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.

• Elemenope Products and Extensions

IONA Technologies

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.

• FUSE ESB
• FUSE Message Broker
• FUSE Services Framework
• FUSE Mediation Router

iWay 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.

• Universal Adapter Suite
• iWay Service Manager
• iWay Business Service Provider
• iWay Data Migrator
• iWay Data Hub
• iWay Enterprise Index
• iWay Process Manager
• iWay SOA Governance
• iWay Trading Manager
• iWay Managed File Transfer
• iWay Secure Messaging Option

Layer 7 Technologies

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.

• XML Accelerator
• XML Data Screen
• XML Firewall and VPN
• XML Networking Gateway
• SecureSpan Mainframe SOA Gateway

Managed Methods

The Managed Methods SOA product is called JaxView, a services-management, governance and monitoring application with a browser-based front end. You can use JaxView to discover Web services, configure management of services and act as a message broker. JaxView monitors service availability (heartbeat) and enables exception handling for failover capabilities.

• JaxView

MEGA International

MEGA offers two suites of products and complements these products with consulting services. Its products are MEGA Modeling Suite and MEGA GRC Suite. The MEGA Modeling Suite promises to help align software with real business processes. The MEGA GRC Suite is for governance, and handles risk management, standards compliance, internal controls and audit management.

• MEGA Modeling Suite
• MEGA GRC Suite

MetaMatrix

We never MetaMatrix we didn’t like. (Granted, that has nothing to do with the company or the product, but we couldn’t resist.) Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix, and the software integrates with Red Hat’s JBoss application server software. You can use MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform to create data services that use a variety of protocols, including ODBC, JDBC and Web services. In short, it promises robust enterprise data access, data management, data security and integrity capabilities for your JBoss SOA projects.

• MetaMatrix Enterprise Data Services Platform Data Sheet (PDF)

MuleSource

MuleSource is a set of open-source SOA solutions, including Mule ESB (enterprise service bus), Mule Galaxy (governance), Mule HQ (management and monitoring) and Mule IDE (development and configuration tools based on Eclipse). One of MuleSource’s credos is to provide customers with tools that leverage open standards to help them prevent vendor lock-in. MuleSource offers subscription-based access to its products.

• Mule ESB
• Mule Galaxy
• Mule HQ
• Mule IDE

Oasis

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a non-profit open standards consortium founded in 1993. OASIS started as SGML Open. SGML spawned XML, which is critical for Web services and SOA; XML.org is part of OASIS. OASIS produces standards for security and e-business, and has produced more Web services standards than any other organization.

OASIS defines SOA as “a collection of best practices principles and patterns related to service-aware, enterprise-level, distributed computing.” One of OASIS’s goals is to develop a reference model for SOA, which OASIS hopes will be a unifying force that preserves the foundational principles of SOA in the face of many differing and sometimes conflicting perceptions of what comprises SOA.

The Technical Committee for SOA includes Duane Nickull, Chair, Francis McCabe, Secretary, Jeff Estefan, Secretary, and James Bryce Clark, OASIS Staff Contact.

• Oasis SOA
• OASIS Mailing Lists
• OASIS Technical Committee Guidelines

The Open Group

The Open Group is a consortium that has coined the trademarked term Boundaryless Information Flow. They describe Boundaryless Information Flow as “open standard components that provide services in a customer’s extended enterprise that combine multiple sources of information [and] securely delivers the information whenever and wherever it is needed, in the right context for the people or systems using that information.”

Leaving aside the question of whether “Boundryless” is a word, the concept encompasses the heart of SOA, which promotes standards-based interoperability that is not limited by operating systems, programming languages, or other platform or vendor-specific technologies.

The Open Group concerns itself with more than just technology. It is proactive in working with customers, and establishing best practices and polices. The Open Group also produces certification services and products.

The work of the Open Group dovetails nicely with that of OMG. One Open Group goal is to define a SOA Governance Reference Model and develop a common definition for SOA Governance.

• The Open Group SOA
• Definition of SOA
• SOA Case Studies
• Value That The Open Group Can Add to SOA
• Ontologies for SOA
• SOA Governance
• SOA/TOGAF Practical Guide
• Service-Oriented Infrastructure
• SOA Reference Architecture
• SOA and Security
• SOA Maturity Model

The Object Management Group

OMG is the Object Management Group, an international non-profit computer industry consortium established in 1989. Historically, OMG has been at the heart of several distributed computing initiatives similar to SOA. For example, OMG defined standards such as the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and OpenDoc, a document-based distributed object model based on CORBA. This makes SOA a familiar domain for OMG.

OMG Task Forces now address enterprise object integration strategies for industries such as Finance, Government, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Manufacturing and Communications, all of which are prime candidates for SOA adoption. OMG produces and manages events such as Object World, EclipseCon, the OSDL Enterprise Linux Summit and the Internationalization & Unicode Conference.

OMG has been a powerful force in distributed computing despite the fact that CORBA has its share of critics and OpenDoc never got off the ground. Given its experience with distributed objects, one might think OMG is a natural for pioneering SOA. But OMG has a less central role in defining SOA-specific standards and technologies. While SOA can employ standards previously driven by OMG, OMG is more involved with advocacy and has a collaborative role with organizations such as W3C, Open Group and OASIS. The SOA ABSIG group is a forum for discussion of SOA definition, methodologies, models, and focuses on business and technical implications such as Business Process Management (BPM) and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA).

• OMG on SOA
• Presentations on SOA
• SOA Maturity Model (PDF)
• SOA Maturity Model Quick Reference (PDF)

Open SOA

The Open SOA Collaboration is a group with the goal of defining a language-neutral programming model for SOA. Strictly speaking, Open SOA is not a standards body. If any standards emerge from Open SOA, they will be de-facto standards defined by vendors who are delivering real-world SOA solutions. Open SOA then makes the specifications for these de-facto standards available to the development community on a royalty-free basis. Open SOA intends to hand over the standards to a standards body (such as OASIS) once they mature.

Open SOA primarily concerns itself with two specifications; Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO).

SCA is a programming model for building SOA applications. SCA employs technologies in common use, such as Web services and Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). SCA 1.0 was published in March 2007, and Open SOA is working with OASIS for formal standardization.

SDO is designed to provide abstraction for unified access to data in various formats including relational databases, XML-formatted data, data accessed through Web services, and other enterprise data sources.

Open SOA is also involved in the SOA PHP project licensed under version 2 of the Apache license. The goal of SOA PHP is to simplify development of PHP applications as part of an SOA infrastructure.

• What is SCA
• What is SDO
• SOA PHP Home Page
• Download SOA PHP Softwrae
• OASIS Open CSA (Service Component Architecture)

SeeWhy

The SeeWhy Software Suite focuses on business integration. The suite comes in two editions: Enterprise and Community. The Community Edition is the frequent-release development version with little support. The Enterprise Edition represents stable snapshots and includes enterprise scalability and paid support.

• SeeWhy Enterprise Edition
• SeeWhy Community Edition

SOAMatrix Software

SOAMatrix offers four products: SOALayers, SOAIntegrator, SOADirector and SOAStore. SOALayers is the company’s comprehensive SOA platform. As its name implies, , SOAIntegrator is the product for integrating various SOA services. SOAStore handles design-time governance and SOADirector covers runtime governance. SOAMatrix offers its products on a 45-day free-trial basis.

• SOALayers
• SOAIntegrator
• SOADirector
• SOAStore

SOA Software

SOA Software focuses primarily on SOA governance automation. Its products include Policy Manager, a tool to manage and automate SOA policies; SOA Software’s Repository Manager, which complements Policy Manager with application development tools; and Service Manager, which implements and enforces Policy Manager’s rules. Finally, SOLA is a gateway between Web services and CICS mainframe applications.

• Policy Manager
• Repository Manager
• Service Manager
• SOLA

SOAInstitute.org

SOAInstitute.org is a portal for SOA professionals to exchange ideas and share knowledge. SOAInstitute.org also offers training and workshops on SOA, BPM and other business architecture issues.

Solstice Software

Solstice Software sells Solstice Integra Suite 6.2, which provides tools for testing SOA governance in a Web services environment. Integra Suite integrates with HP’s Quality Center.

SOPERA

SOPERA is an open-source SOA platform that includes a suite of development tools, enterprise service bus (ESB) and governance tools. SOPERA is heavily invested in the philosophy of open source, and claims a high degree of reliability due to the principle that “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

• The SOPERA Platform

WSO2

WSO2 offers a comprehensive set of open-source SOA tools licensed under the Apache license. As such, WSO2 is a contributor to several Apache projects, including Apache Axis2, Apache Rampart, Apache Synapse, Apache Axiom and others.

• WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus
• WSO2 Mashup Server
• WSO2 Registry
• WSO2 Web Services Application Server
• WSO2 Identity Solution
• WSO2 Web Services Framework for PHP
• WSO2 Web Services Framework for C
• WSO2 Web Services Framework for Ruby
• WSO2 Web Services Framework for C++
• WSO2 Web Services Framework for Perl
• WSO2 Web Services Framework for Spring

XimpleWare

XimpleWare claims to provide next-generation XML processing solutions that increase the performance of your ESB. Its primary product is the open-source VTD-XML, licensed under the GPL.

• XimpleWare Demo
• The VTD-XML Java API