Among the highlights are enhancements to three WebSphere products that used with SOA deployments, including WebSphere Portal, Process Server, and Integration Developer.
WebSphere Portal is getting new accelerators or templates for promoting collaboration via WebSphere Portal. IBM is also adding pre-built administrative processes for managing multiple portal projects.
IBM is also simplifying installation, configuration, and profile management for WebSphere Process Server, its business process management (BPM) offering. And it is adding new support for human workflows that may be required in conjunction with automated services. Additionally, it is adding new templates for security and business rules, and for establishing mediation processes for WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).
Another SOA-related enhancement is the addition of a new portlet creation wizard, simplified integration templates, accommodation for human workflow, and reduced build time and memory for WebSphere Integration Developer.
For this round of releases, IBM is introducing Optim, the information lifecycle management and data governance product that came to it through the Princeton Softech acquisition. Caporuting data at the business record level, Optim provides tools to automate migration of data from active to inactive and archival status, while automating the filtering of confidential data to safeguard privacy in environments, such as SOA, where applications could be composed dynamically.
To help customers get their feet wet with SOA, IBM is introducing a new SOA Sandbox service, providing a testbed that is available free of charge on IBM’s developerWorks website. Some of the software bundles that will be available for free trial in the sandbox will include Rational Software Architect, a tool covering design, develop, assemble, test, profile and deploy web services and SOA applications. IBM is also providing quick start guides that provide step-by-step instructions for installing core SOA software.
IBM is also releasing web services-related enhancements to WebSphere Message Broker and MQ; Tivoli Composite Application Manager for SOA, which provides run-time QSOA governance; WebSphere DataPower XML Security appliance, which administers security for XML and Web services; and IBM Information Server, which dispenses data services.
On the services side, IBM is devising new SOA Healthchecks that evaluate your organization’s readiness to adopt SOA, or its progress in implementation. It pinpoints applications and infrastructure, evaluating parameters such as degree of reuse, or whether applications have been optimized to spur reuse.
On the infrastructure end, the healthcheck examines factors such as headroom for growth. The analysis is based on the assumption that exposing traditional silo’ed applications will spawn new usage patterns, and that infrastructure and middleware platforms must be flexible or virtualized sufficiently to handle current and anticipated loads.
The healthchecks were developed based on detailed knowledge from 200 SOA engagements and higher-level lessons learned from roughly 400 more.
