Systems/Enterprise:
ACTIONAL, WESTBRIDGE MERGE, RAISING BAR FOR SOA ENABLEMENT
Actional Corp, a Web services management software provider, and Westbridge
Technology, a vendor of security infrastructure solutions for Web services and
service-oriented architectures (SOA), announced the merger of the two
companies and the completion of a round of funding for $12.9 million. The
newly formed company, which will operate under the name of Actional Corp, also
unveiled the Actional SOA Command and Control Platform, an industry
breakthrough in SOA enablement made possible through the combination of the
merged companies' technologies and domain expertise.
"This merger marks the beginning of the next wave of SOA enablement, and
yields a powerful solution set that simplifies an organization's adoption of
SOA, accelerates the associated cost benefits, and increases business
agility," said Tom Ryan, former CEO of Westbridge Technology and now CEO of
Actional Corp. "Actional's new SOA Command and Control Platform is more than
just the integration of our best-of-breed technologies for XML security and
Web services management. It offers the broadest set of solutions for securing,
deploying and managing SOAs, all from a single vendor, all within a unified
yet open framework."
The Need For SOA Command And Control
Early Web services and SOA adopters have encountered challenges in deploying
successful and scalable implementations, whether for small Web services
projects or in charting a course for wholesale adoption of SOA across the
enterprise. Chief among requirements is the critical need to efficiently
secure and manage service-based applications. Adding to the complexity has
been the stress on organizations to cobble together and maintain separate
best-of-breed technologies from a variety of vendors. Ideally, adopting an
open SOA framework that provides a central point of control for all aspects of
managing an SOA will help facilitate effective supervision and governance of
the overall SOA environment to align these systems with critical business
requirements such as compliance and customer satisfaction.
"As the adoption of Web services and SOAs expands, the needs of organizations
are evolving and becoming more complex, as are the roles of those responsible
for developing and executing a successful SOA strategy," said Sandra Rogers,
program director of SOA and Web services for IDC. "With their complementary
technologies, the combined offering from the merger of Actional and Westbridge
is targeted at simplifying the work needed to deploy an integrated SOA
environment, thus driving down total cost of ownership, and by remaining open,
leveraging the value of an organization's existing IT investments."
Introducing Actional SOA Command And Control Platform
With this merger, Actional and Westbridge are combining their strengths to
deliver the Actional SOA Command and Control Platform, a new breed of solution
that provides a unified command and control layer that brings the SOA into
alignment with business objectives and drives SOA efficiency across the
enterprise. Further, the Actional SOA Command and Control Platform offers
comprehensive solutions designed to address the range of challenges
organizations encounter, from early Web services projects to strategic SOA
implementations, and provides a migration path as companies progress through
the SOA lifecycle.
Actional SOA Command and Control provides comprehensive solutions that enable
organizations to:
- Achieve true end-to-end SOA visibility, security, control within the
enterprise and beyond the edge, ensuring that an organization's SOA is secure
and operational 24-7 for mission-critical applications.
- Drive rapid compliance with all policies (security, business, regulatory)
from all functional areas through quick and seamless policy implementation and
management capabilities.
- Monitor and manage a heterogeneous SOA through an open architecture that
can support all elements of the SOA fabric whether from Actional or another
provider of brokers or security gateways, as well as all SOAP and non-SOAP
services such as databases, Web pages, legacy services and more.
- Maintain business continuity across the SOA through real-time response to
security, performance or availability breaches, leveraging rapid root cause
analysis and corrective action capabilities.
- Optimize and automatically tune the SOA to guarantee ongoing attainment of
ever-changing service level agreements, performance targets, regulatory
compliance and other business or IT objectives.
- Seamlessly interoperate with and leverage the capabilities of key
third-party infrastructure such as identity management systems, directory
services, enterprise management systems, leveraging an organization's
investment in those technologies.
"This merger provides companies such as ours with a unified SOA infrastructure
for controlling an increasingly fragmented service environment, helping to
ensure compliance and achieve true business alignment," said Christopher
Crowhurst, vice president and principal architect of Thomson Learning.
"Actional SOA Command and Control addresses the toughest challenges that we've
encountered in the evolution of our SOA, and presents the strongest value
proposition on the market."
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