 |
|
DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
|
Breaking News - Platforms:
Actional Unveils Next Phase Of SOA Management Offerings
Actional Corp announced significant enhancements across its entire SOA
management platform. The new release, Actional 5.1, extends management
capabilities beyond Web services (SOAP and XML) to encompass other types of
services that are typically part of an overall service-oriented architecture
(SOA). Building on its unique, patent-pending technology, Actional continues
to expand its capabilities, and is now the only vendor to provide true
end-to-end SOA visibility and control, delivering to organizations the tools
necessary to monitor and address SOA management challenges regardless of
service type, stakeholder or phase of the SOA project lifecycle.
"As Web services evolve from novelties to important components of corporate
IT, companies are requesting features that reflect real world needs for
production systems. Actional 5.1, with its new management agents and improved
analysis capabilities, is about meeting these needs," said Tom Rhinelander,
analyst with New Rowley Group. "In addition, Actional's focus on SOA
management reflects the fact that companies should focus on the entire
interconnected service environment, not just collections of Web services."
Expanded SOA Management From A Single Console
Actional is expanding the scope of Looking Glass, launching the first in a
series of new Active Agents for managing non-SOAP services, specifically
databases, Web pages, middleware and non-XML legacy systems. The new 5.1
products include Actional Active Agent for JDBC, Actional Active Agent for JSP
and Servlets, and Actional Active Agent for ASPX. Further, Actional is
offering an SDK to enable the management of legacy and custom non-SOAP
services within an SOA environment.
Additionally, Looking Glass 5.1 has been enhanced to support the new Active
Agents, which fully leverage existing Looking Glass features such as SLA
monitoring and enforcement, automatic correlation across all service tiers,
root cause analysis and watchdogs for proactive monitoring. With the Looking
Glass 5.1 enhancements, combined with its ability to integrate with
traditional systems management solutions, organizations can use Looking Glass
to actively control the entire SOA from within a single console.
SOA Visibility And Control For Every Stakeholder
With the release of 5.1, Actional builds on its ability to address the needs
of various stakeholders within the organization, from developers to
administrators to business users. Looking Glass 5.1 introduces sophisticated
business impact analysis, forming a clear tie between operations and business
needs. A bridge between pure business monitoring and pure infrastructure
monitoring, Looking Glass 5.1 allows service requests to be partitioned into
multiple user-defined dimensions to track service activity and apply
service-level policies based on real business factors. Examples of dimensions
include standard customer classification information, geographical location,
business structure and order value, and others, all of which can be defined
through a simple user interface, using any context or content information from
the service requests.
Further, with the recent introduction of Actional's new SOAPstation Developer
Version, developers can accelerate the delivery of their projects while
simultaneously making them immediately manageable, reducing the cost and
complexity of SOA services. Additionally, administrators have access to
Looking Glass capabilities for monitoring and assessment, while business users
have increased visibility into the service network and support for business
impact analysis with Actional's MyServices Portal.
The core Actional platform mediates among these users, providing role based
administration capabilities so each class of user can view or change only the
information and configuration for which they are authorized. A new feature for
the 5.1 platform, self-service administration allows shared installations of
Actional products to appear as if each user has their own copy of the
software, dedicated only to their use. With "virtual Web services management"
software for every team, organizations can cut down on the cost and complexity
of managing separate installations.
Tools For The Entire SOA Lifecycle
To ensure a project's success in an overall SOA environment, management cannot
be an afterthought. Actional's SOA management platform offers management
across the entire SOA lifecycle. From development to production, services are
visible and controlled. Specifically, the 5.1 platform offers enhancements to
increase deployment speed and efficiency through automated machine build-out
and provisioning to tailor services for unexpected uses. After SOA rollout,
Looking Glass 5.1 includes service stabilizers and proven capabilities for SLA
enforcement, dependency tracking and root cause analysis.
"In reality, no organization builds an SOA from scratch, using only SOAP and
XML. While SOAP and XML may form the 'bus' at the core of an SOA, an SOA
evolves from and extends the existing enterprise architecture which
encompasses many other types of services," said Dan Foody, CTO of Actional.
"With 5.1, Actional helps align IT more closely with business needs,
addressing the entire network and ensuring customers' investments in SOAs have
a strong impact on the business."
|