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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /

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Systems/Enterprise:

ADOPTION OF WEB SERVICES, DEMAND FOR SOA INCREASING

Westbridge Technology, a leading provider of Web Services Management (WSM) and XML Firewall enterprise solutions, released the results of a comprehensive Web Services usage survey indicating a strong demand among enterprises for solutions that feature integrated Web Services management and security functionality.

The survey was hosted by an independent company that collected the data and provided statistics used in this report. Survey respondents came from a number of organizations, including Global 1,000 corporations, public sector institutions and systems integrators.

"Our survey yielded some very encouraging results validating our long- standing beliefs that a number of very specific management and security features are paramount to organizations deploying Web Services," said Tom Ryan, CEO of Westbridge Technology. "By offering the industry's leading integrated WSM and XML Firewall solution, Westbridge Technology is ideally positioned to service this critical market need."

"Enterprises that use Web services will demand security and management functionality in a single platform," said Ray Wagner, research director at Gartner. "As these two segments converge -- and Web services security platform vendors disappear -- enterprises increasingly will demand that web services management platforms deliver strong security functionality."


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Web Services Interest And Usage Is Growing

There was little surprise as to the interest level in Web Services by survey respondents. While 44 percent of respondents are still researching Web Services, 37 percent already have Web Services in production. Another 26 percent of respondents say they are either planning to deploy in six months or are already running proof-of-concept projects.

While most of the respondents are using Web Services internally (70 percent), 48 percent plan to use Web Services externally, indicating that the use of XML Firewalls to secure Web Services is providing confidence to these corporations.

Services Oriented Architectures (SOA) Gaining Traction

Survey respondents reported using Web Services to solve a variety of problems. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), business-to-business (B2B), straight through processing (STP), SOA and component-based development were all popular reasons for using Web Services. While SOA has yet to be accepted as a commonly-used term, 76 percent of respondents who were familiar with the term are moving to an SOA. Only 24 percent said they were not currently moving to an SOA environment.

Usage Patterns: .NET vs. Java

Survey respondents noted that Web Services traffic in their organization was generated by several different technologies. .NET continues to be the most popular tool for Web Services generation. Forty-three percent of respondents have Web Services traffic generated by .NET tools. Java was a close second with 35 percent. Thirty-nine percent of respondents have Web Services traffic is generated by a combination of packaged applications, desktop applications (like Microsoft Excel) and mainframe legacy systems.

Wait-And-See On Standards Usage

According to survey respondents, many of the new standards such as UDDI, WS-Security, XML Encryption, XML Signature, SAML, WS-I and XACML are infrequently used, most likely due to the immaturity of the standards. These technologies however were on the roadmaps of many respondents, indicating today's immaturity in standards and the lack of resources to support new and evolving standards.

Web Services Solutions: XML Firewall And Web Services Management (WSM)

Fifty-eight percent of respondents indicated they are evaluating or will evaluate XML Firewall solutions within the next 12 months. In addition, and perhaps not coincidentally, 58 percent are also examining WSM solutions.

Of the respondents who had a preference, 84 percent preferred a combined XML Firewall and WSM product. Only 16 percent said that they would not prefer such a combination.

Westbridge Technology -- The Critical Choice For Web Services Projects

Westbridge Technology ensures that your Web Services projects are cost effective and deployed with minimum risk. Westbridge provides industry- leading XML Web Services security and management technology that enable Web Services deployments in a fraction of the time with minimum development, security and operational risk.

The Westbridge XML Message Server (XMS) is a single-source solution for both internal and external Web Services and is a key enabler for SOA. The Westbridge XMS helps manage the lifecycle of every Web Service, saving enterprises time and money on service development, testing, deployment, versioning administration and service retirement.

The Westbridge XMS helps ensure that services are always standards-based, supporting all of the latest standards while buffering the administrators from inevitable changes. Westbridge provides interoperability support with numerous standards and technologies including .NET, Java, BEA, etc., enabling seamless service connectivity with partners, customers and service consumers. The Westbridge XMS insulates the customer from interoperability and integration risk.

XML Firewalls and Web Services Management are well recognized categories in the Web Services market and many organizations are devoting resources to institute these tools to secure and manage their environments. The survey respondents are clear in demanding a fully integrated, XML Firewall and WSM solution.

"The survey respondents are nearly unanimous in their desire for fully- integrated solutions to manage and secure their Web Services deployments because it makes common sense," said Ryan. "Unified products such as the Westbridge XMS only require a single license and one product to train IT staff to manage and support. Integrated products also tend to offer greater scalability and have virtually zero interoperability and configuration problems that can impact security and performance."

For more information or to obtain a copy of the survey and the detailed results, please visit www.westbridge tech.com/registerP.jsp?c=210.

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