CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
October 1, 2007
Product News
Software AG Automates SOA Governance with Introduction of CentraSite Governance Edition
Software AG, a global leader in business infrastructure software, today announced the immediate availability of the CentraSite Governance Edition as a comprehensive, standards-based solution for managing and governing the services, processes, policies and business rules associated with service-oriented architecture (SOA). Building upon the industry-leading webMethods Infravio X-Registry, the CentraSite Governance Edition lowers the threshold to successful SOA adoption by helping enterprises more easily and quickly define their governance model, extend unified service governance across the enterprise, and enforce consistent standards for usage. Specific features include new automated governance processes and policy enforcement embedded directly into the platform; a richer, more extensible metadata repository; a more intuitive, Web 2.0 user interface; and the inclusion of prepackaged best practices and wizard-driven templates for guiding lifecycle management of all SOA assets.
When managed appropriately, SOA improves business agility while reducing operational costs by enabling the structured reuse of existing IT assets within new, business-driven applications and processes. What has prevented many enterprises from fully capitalizing on these opportunities are the challenges associated with managing the underlying complexities and interdependencies inherent in this more granular approach to application development. By institutionalizing these processes via an automated approach to lifecycle governance, enterprises can implement best practices from day one, which lowers long-term costs while delivering more immediate benefits and faster adoption.
"Enterprise users of SOA want to minimize complexity, simplify adoption and demonstrate faster payback. With the release of the CentraSite Governance Edition, we're squarely addressing each of these concerns," said Peter Kürpick, Chief Product Officer of the webMethods business division at Software AG. "Our approach empowers users to make faster, smarter decisions regarding service reuse and the management of associated policies. By doing so, users can focus on more strategic concerns rather than the underlying, mundane tasks needed to tame complexity. With more rapid and widespread adoption, enterprises benefit from greater ROI due to the exponential nature of SOA."
"Software AG's CentraSite Governance Edition raises the bar for SOA Governance solutions," said Ron Schmelzer, Managing Partner at ZapThink, LLC. "The market demands SOA Governance solutions that span the full SOA lifecycle, that govern service assets beyond just Web services, and automate governance processes using sophisticated policy management capabilities for design, run and change-time governance. Software AG's newest release addresses these capabilities and presents them in a user-friendly, intuitive interface that simplifies governance and helps IT accelerate SOA adoption."
CentraSite Governance Edition builds upon the experiences of more that 150 enterprise customers. Enterprises can leverage this platform to establish, manage and implement service definitions, governance processes and usage policies across multiple stakeholders and throughout the service lifecycle. It ensures that available services are readily available for reuse, enforces enterprise-class standards for performance and streamlines subsequent change management.
As a fully-unified registry/repository encompassing both a UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration protocol), v. 3.0 compliant registry and a fully extensible, JAXR complaint (Java API for XML Registries) repository for maintaining associated metadata and policies, CentraSite Governance Edition can be implemented as the design-time, run-time and change-time governance platform for any heterogeneous environment. As an SOA's system of record, it also acts as a policy hub for run-time enforcement with an integrated run-time policy enforcement point, webMethods X-Broker, and standards-based support for additional third-party applications used to mediate transactions between service providers and consumers. Users can fully leverage available services via an intuitive, task-driven interface with automated processes used to enact and enforce decisions across the SOA lifecycle.
Key features and enhancements within CentraSite Governance Edition include:
• Active PolicyT-Automates SOA processes, including validation, provisioning, registration of services and service change management, to accelerate deployment while ensuring quality control. By doing so, it simplifies end-user adoption, improves productivity and delivers a more robust SOA.
• Best Practices-Pre-loaded with more than eighty pre-defined best practices that streamline end-user adoption.
• Unified Lifecycle Governance-Enables seamless asset lifecycle governance via consistent enforcement of policies across design-time, run-time AND change-time environments.
• Enhanced Repository-Expands service reuse via universal availability of service definitions and histories, and policy documents.
• Open Metadata Model-Allows customers to model and govern all types of reusable SOA assets-from Web services to CORBA services to BPEL processes. This facilitates closer alignment with business objectives by bringing simplicity to the creation of business-specific metadata definitions, service classifications, and associated policies.
• Enhanced Change-Time Governance-Richer, interactive impact analysis improves agility as well as service reliability and availability by allowing users to more quickly and easily assess the impact of proposed changes on downstream relationships.
• Intuitive User Interface-By combining a single view of the SOA landscape with a rich AJAX-based Web 2.0 interface, CentraSite Governance Edition simplifies the creation, deployment and management of services-based solutions. This more intuitive workflow and streamlined navigation works to integrate even occasional users with limited experience fully into the service governance lifecycle.
• Customized Views-Role-based service visibility minimizes complexity while allowing users to easily drill-down on areas of specific interest.
• SOA Federation-For mature SOA deployments that extend across multiple geographies and functional departments, CentraSite Governance Edition synchronizes governance processes and policy enforcement across disparate repositories and SOA infrastructure components, such as testing tools, SOA management products and security appliances. This makes it easier to manage an SOA from an enterprise-wide perspective.
• Open API and Standards Support-Extends access and policy enforcement control to third-party products, giving users the ability to more easily integrate and interoperate with third-party policy enforcement points. As a result, enterprises can more easily expose and manage SOA-based interactions with partners, customers and suppliers.
CentraSite Governance Edition is available now. Additional information, including pricing, is available from an authorized Software AG sales representative. It can also be previewed at Integration World 2007, taking place this November 5-7th in Orlando, Florida. Additional information on this 6th annual conference can be found at http://www.integrationworld2007.com/
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