BEDFORD, Mass., April 10 -- Progress Software Corp., a provider of leading application infrastructure software to develop, deploy, integrate and manage business applications, is alerting IT organizations of the top misconceptions associated with SOA management and governance. Following a recent Forrester Research report covering SOA specialty products such as SOA management, Progress Software warns that rogue services are a significant source of IT chaos within SOA.

Forrester Research analysts Randy Heffner and Larry Fulton stated in a Jan. 29 report entitled “When to use which type of SOA Specialty Product”: “SOA management can help govern your SOA environment by identifying services that are not properly cataloged in your SOA repository. Strategically, most firms should plan for eventually adding SOA management to their overall SOA platform, even if they can get by today.”

Rogue services within an SOA are mismanaged or lost Web services that cause problems for unknowing IT managers who might be using them. In a worst-case scenario, a rogue service does not comply with business policies and/or compliance mandates, resulting in costly, and potentially contentious, audits. The rise of rogue services is increasing the adoption of the Progress Actional product line from Progress Software, which finds rogue services and automatically governs their activities according to applicable policies.

Progress Software has outlined the top 10 misconceptions of SOA management and governance at www.actional.com/soa-misconceptions/.

Three of the top 10 misconceptions about SOA management and governance that apply to the impact of rogue services on IT infrastructure and are as follows:

1. Perception: Rogue services are a result of malicious code planted by hackers.
   
   Reality: Not always. Packaged applications may contain unidentified services that are susceptible to being used in unintended ways.
   
   
2. Perception: A company’s security infrastructure prevents the proliferation of rogue services.
   
   Reality: Rogue services can undermine a company’s security initiatives, making financial and other confidential information vulnerable.
   
   
3. Perception: Rogue services are bothersome but not dangerous.
   
   Reality: Rogue services can lead to prosecution or company shutdowns if compliance mandates are not met.

“Rogue services lurk in the shadows of many SOAs and most IT organizations are not doing enough to prevent their proliferation,” said Dan Foody, vice president of Actional Products at Progress Software. “Rogue services can truly be silent killers. For example, if a rogue service is embedded within a financial application, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance can be compromised resulting in company executives having to testify in court as to why and how an unknown Web service captured credit card data that was accessed by hackers. The good news is that proper management and governance will help organizations develop water-tight SOA environments.”

Progress Actional Web services management and SOA runtime governance products provide visibility, security and control of service activities and end-to-end business processes in a runtime environment. Actional Web services management and SOA runtime governance capabilities include system and process-level visibility, as well as policy enforcement across an SOA infrastructure deployed on any combination of platforms. For information on Actional products, see www.progress.com/actional.

About Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corp. provides application infrastructure software for the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. Our goal is to maximize the benefits of information technology while minimizing its complexity and total cost of ownership. Progress can be reached at www.progress.com.

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