Web services management, registry bundle a unique venture |
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By Michael S. Mimoso, Senior News Editor
20 Sep 2004 | SearchWebServices.com |
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Enterprises ready to reuse services need fundamental building blocks like management capabilities that monitor service health, and a registry or repository where services are described and can be accessed.
These are complementary needs, but normally, they are separate purchases.
Web services management vendor AmberPoint Inc., Oakland, Calif., and registry provider Systinet Inc., Cambridge, Mass., changed that landscape today by releasing the SOA Starter Pack, a bundle that includes AmberPoint Management Foundation and the Systinet Registry, as well as support and on-site training.
The bundle combines the discovery and management capabilities needed to get a service-oriented architecture off the ground.
"All successful SOA projects have some sort of registry and some sort of management," said Ed Horst, vice president of marketing at AmberPoint. "They are two fundamental pieces you need to get started."
What makes this relationship unique is that it goes beyond a traditional partnership, said ZapThink LLC senior analyst Ronald Schmelzer.
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All successful SOA projects have some sort of registry and some sort of management. They are two fundamental pieces you need to get started.
Ed Horst
Vice president, marketing, AmberPoint Inc.
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"This is more like each company has the other's product. You can buy the bundle from either company," Schmelzer said. "They've agreed on pricing and support and both own the customer."
The marriage may have been inevitable, Schmelzer said.
"They just started seeing each other a lot in deals," Schmelzer said. "Companies were buying Systinet's Registry and they were eventually buying AmberPoint to manage SOAs. They have complementary value propositions. It made sense to try to sell them together rather than independently."
The bundle sells for $25,000 and is available today from either vendor. The Systinet Registry supports the latest UDDI specification, version 3. It is a repository where enterprises can publish and access Web services. Services are also described there, as well as connection instructions.
AmberPoint Management Foundation, meanwhile, supports .NET and J2EE. It is a policy-based management system that monitors services for problems, handles versioning and lifecycle management of Web services, enforces security policies and monitors for attacks. It also features service brokering, dashboards that visualize service health, and logging and auditing capabilities.
Together, the bundle provides for automatic provisioning of management where AmberPoint will automatically update the Systinet Registry with management data, detect and publish service information, and share service information like what security or transport calls a Web service support.
Systinet has a solid reputation among developers, and is now trying to branch out to reach chief information officers, system architects and other C-level executives, Schmelzer said.
"It's not a crowded playing field," Schmelzer said of the registry market. "There are a few others like Infravio (X-registry) that do something that also includes the management side. The big guys don't have standalone registries either. IBM's registry comes with WebSphere and Microsoft .NET relies on Active Directory."
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