SOA Infrastructure Blog

SaaS, PaaS... why not SOAaaS (SOA as a Service)?

A busy day in the rapidly converging SOA and Cloud worlds. Oracle talks about plans for the cloud, retracting from the skepticism expressed some months back. Intuit announces a PaaS platform. Another SOA infrastructure vendor dabbles with SOA on the cloud - striking dichotomy here. On one hand we are still trying to figure out how exactly to make SOA projects successful. And on the other, we are talking about SOA in the Cloud and PaaS platforms for SOA. Even so, I find it a natural progression.

PaaS, and therefrom the SOA impact, follows the success of SaaS. Which itself was the best thing to happen to ISVs in recent times. A combination of emerging application models, web based software UI approaches, new cloud platforms, and a very wide acceptance of externally hosted software solutions - less of technology and more of mindset. Now it is only a logical extension of the SaaS paradigm that now one will expect to build custom solutions on the web (PaaS). Or host solutions directly on the web based infrastructure (Cloud). And the moment there are applications, SOA cannot be far behind. The nature of the cloud beast is also such that the significance of SOA and distributed management/governance becomes even more critical given the rather loosely coupled and a less-controlled computing environment.

So while enterprises may be OK with having solutions hosted externally on the web/cloud, they may still want the integrated enterprise where these external solutions are seamlessly available in the enterprise integration platform (SOA) and also in the enterprise distributed management and governance platform. We can probably extend these to bring the external apps into the prevailing GRC and BAM framework in the enterprise, so it is only natural that SOA becomes a first class consideration when SaaS/PaaS/Cloud are in the picture.

Not far will be the support for SOA as a primary attribute of cloud platforms. Right off the bat one will have the ability to build and host applications over the web, with the default web based UI models and a very integration ready platform - both for consuming/orchestrating services over the web, and also to expose new services (off this application) over the web.

Now... taking this a bit further, one could look at explicit platforms just FOR integration and SOA!  Even now there are BPM vendors like Cordys that are providing a web based orchestration platforms (PaaS). These can easily be extended to offer a complete services and integration-application platform on the cloud. Only, we need to figure out the use cases where one needs integration off the cloud. Needing SOA as a Service (SOAaaS).

The ACORD Information Model

Congratulations are in order for our hard working data services and engineering teams. Progress was recently awarded two ACORD Accomplishment Awards for our work with the insurance standards organization, ACORD.

We won an Innovative Implementation Award for the Progress DataXtend Browsers for ACORD, in P&C and Life flavors. These browsers will enable ACORD members to more easily use and understand the existing ACORD standards for P&C and Life.   We also won an Early Adopter Award for our work supporting the unambiguous mappings between the existing ACORD XML standards and the new ACORD Information Model. 

If you’d like a seven minute summary, you should watch our interview with Frank Neugebauer, the Assistant VP of Technology at ACORD. John Petrie, Bill Gino and Boris Bulanov discuss with Frank our work with the Browsers and the Information Model. While the interview is a great summary, I'm sure that many of you would like to learn more about the new ACORD Framework, its core components and the business value it offers. 

At 3:00pm ET on June 25th Frank Neugebauer of ACORD and Boris Bulanov gave a webinar on ACORD Information model. An archive of the event will be posted here.  It’s a great opportunity to join your colleagues to learn more about the ACORD Framework and how the ACORD Information Model provides the foundation for information architecture in insurance.

The power of proactivity

Earlier this week (last Friday evening to be exact), I took off on a business trip to Australia.  I was scheduled to go from Boston to San Francisco, and from there to Sydney.  When I arrived at the airport, I checked in, cleared security, and meandered towards my gate.

When I got to the gate, the gate agent was calling out my name.  United's not my regular airline so I didn't have any special status that would get me upgraded automatically or anything like that.  So, when the gate agent calls your name in this situation, you usually think "uh oh". I went up to the gate to find out what was up.  Here's what they told me:  They said that the flight to San Francisco might leave late due to delays in San Francisco so my connection would be tight.  So, just to make sure, on the spot they re-booked me through Los Angeles on flights that left and arrived at around the same time as my original itinerary.

The last 15 years I've been Platinum or higher on multiple airlines - but this was the first time an airline had ever been this proactive.  As soon as I was re-booked, I checked and there was no delay listed for the San Francisco flight yet nor did the FAA show any general delays for San Francisco.  I was pretty impressed and am a very happy customer. I will also try to fly with them more in future (now if they'd only put electrical outlets in coach - but that's another story).

How does this translate to the IT world?  If you can anticipate or detect problems before your business users are even aware of them you, will become a hero.  Some people want to hide issues from their users, but don't be afraid to let your business users know there's an issue. If you are taking actions to address the issue, and the users see that, they will gain trust in you.

A question that often runs through people's minds when they think of this is, will your users think you're not on the ball if this happens too often (is it better to only react to the really bad issues proactively)? Would I have gotten mad at United if the original flight wasn't actually delayed?  Not at all.  The fact that they were thinking ahead was what mattered to me. 

Users don't expect perfection - they expect (and respect) honesty, empathy, responsiveness.  Give them that and they will be with you for the long haul.

Now That's What We Mean By Performance!

Was visiting a customer in Switzerland last week and a funny thing happened.

They presented us with where they are in their deployment... they've deployed their first "major" application early last year (Inventory Management), and this year are planning two more applications in the suite to be deployed in 2010 (E-Ticketing & Centralized Checking-in).

They're using a very old version of Actional (v6x), and I was hoping to help them understand why it was important to upgrade to the current release (v8.0). The Inventory Management application contains about 300 applications (including TIBCO BusinessWorks and Oracle/BEA WebLogic Server), and is designed for 400 million messages per month. They're currently doing about half that. (It was really cool to see the Actional console with those sorts of numbers in the dashboards!!!)

Each of the new applications will probably add a similar amount of traffic. 1.2 Billion messages per month. Surely, there's my in.

I started talking about how we've made major improvements to auditing performance, user-interface usability in large scale environments, and CPU and memory utilization, along with general performance improvements you'd expect in two years of development. I was sure this was a certain driver for them to upgrade to a recent version, when the lead architect from Progress leaned over, and whispered in my ear...

The current architecture's not even breathing hard. Even with that traffic growth, we'd probably only be at 30-40% of design capacity.

What can I say? We have a really fantastic engineering team.

And, I'll have to work with the customer on building a business case for upgrading using a different angle.

Patently Confusing!

Well, if you track our "space," you'd have seen that Forum has been awarded a patent on XML security appliances. Apparently, it's patent number 7,516,333.

As it turns out, Actional has a patent in the area of web service security too - Patent 7,480,799.

It seems that Forum's patent focuses on appliance devices (hardware) that incorporates acceleration, though doesn't limit itself to web services.

To help compare the difference between the two patents, you might look at the top level claims.

Forum's states that their patent is...

A method for applying security policies to data in a network, said method comprising the steps of: intercepting data being transferred across the network; determining that a security function to be performed can be offloaded for acceleration; utilizing a JAVA.RTM. Cryptographic Engine (JCE) to transparently offload the data; performing the security function in hardware, said hardware performing the steps of: entering a request in a JCE layer for a cryptographic function to be performed; invoking JAVA.RTM. Native Interface (JNI) hooks in a JNI layer to function as an interface to an operating system specific C programming language interface library; unpacking data from the intercepted data so that the unpacked data can be manipulated in the operating system specific programming language; and marshalling the unpacked data in a cryptographic messaging layer so that the unpacked data can be transformed to a standard format.

Whereas our patent is...

A computer-implemented method of implementing security for Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages which can be exchanged between client and server programs, the method comprising: receiving a SOAP message; determining whether at least one security rule has been defined for the SOAP message, the at least one security rule being defined based on a security policy for exchanging SOAP messages between at least one client program and at least one server program, wherein the at least one security rule includes at least one decryption rule; and performing at least one security related operation on the SOAP message based on the at least one security rule when the determining determines that at least one security rule is associated with the SOAP message, wherein the performing of the at least one operation comprises: determining whether the SOAP message is encrypted, and decrypting the SOAP message based on one or more decryption keys which are associated with the at least one decryption rule.

Looks like ours deals with how policies are applied to SOAP messages, even when they're encrypted.

I want to congratulate Forum for being second to the patent game here... ours just beat theirs, being approved January 20th, 2009.

Of course, we're not new to the patent game. We've got a few around our unique runtime governance technology as well... it's why our competitors are constantly saying, "you know who you do business with" or "you don't want to have all that information in your display, it's too confusing." The method we use to discover services in a network is unique and they can't do it (while running in production all the time, on any protocol, and not affecting performance).

In case the two summaries above aren't enough to put you to sleep on the spot (I've found myself dozing off as I write this myself), below are links to the others. I believe there are also a patent or two pending on the Actional Team Server / Actional Diagnostic technology too.

Patent 5,732,270 (1998)
Patent 6,349,343 (2002)
Patent 7,330,889 (2008)

This last one is the real interesting stuff relative to Actional. The title is "Network Interaction Analysis Arrangement", and relates to the way we (and our partner Software AG) compete successfully against solutions from HP, SOA Software, and Amberpoint.

The abstract:

In a network through which service providing nodes are interconnected, one or more software elements at each service providing node process the network operations. A client interceptor coupled in an examine node to a selected software element intercepts transmissions from the software element to record transmission flow control information. A server interceptor coupled in the examine mode to the selected software element intercepts transmissions to the software element to record transmission flow control information. An administrative node of the network examines the transmission flow control information from the selected software elements to assess network operation.

And the top-level claim:

A computer network interconnecting a plurality of service providing nodes each including software elements for performing computer network tasks and an administrative node for monitoring the computer network tasks, at least one of the service providing nodes comprising: a plurality of software elements in an application layer of the service providing node for coupling to other software elements in the same application layer and in the application layers of other service providing nodes of the network to process operations of the network; an interceptor unit for each software element of the at least one service providing node, the interceptor unit being coupled to its software element in response to selection of the software element by the administrative node for intercepting transmissions in the application layer from the selected software element to other software elements in the same and different service providing nodes and for intercepting transmissions in the application layer to the selected software element from other software elements in the same and different service providing nodes wherein said interceptor unit further forms a record of information pertaining to the transmissions at the selected software element and each record of transmission pertaining information further comprises a chain correlation identifier to identify an operation of a selected software element in its performance of a network task and an interaction correlation identifier to identify an interaction of a selected software element with another software element; and a transfer unit responsive to a transfer command from the administrative node to the selected software element for transferring the record pertaining to transmission pertaining information from the interceptor unit to the administrative node, in order to monitor operations of network tasks.

Actional for IONA Orbix & DB

I've been on the road since the end of May and I have also moved, so needless to say, I'm behind on my blogging and tweeting responsibilities. I mean, you know you're busy when you don't have time to tweet!

My colleagues have been out there though, doing some great things. We've got some early trials going on with Actional being evaluated at a few IONA Orbix (CORBA) customers. Since the team has tweeted this, I thought I'd blog about it!

As Frank Lynch said, "CORBA users will be mighty pleased to have Actional visibility, an no performance penalty to boot." Yep, couldn't a' said it better myself.

Why is Actional/Orbix integration important?

1. It demonstrates a key differentiator between Actional and all other solutions out there... we're not designed specifically for web services. Never were. Extending Actional beyond web services started in late 2003, and continues with the work we're doing with the Orbix team.
   
2. CORBA customers are "interesting" in that they are typical enterprise class deployments. They have high message rates, are deployed in critical infrastructure, and are sophisticated deployments due to their maturity. Right in Actional's sweet spot.
   
3. In this down economy, Progress has a key advantage over our smaller competitors, so much so that it's hard to actually view these customers as competitors. Where these small guys have to go and develop new customer relationships, we can continue to delight our existing customer base (in over 100 countries) with innovative integrations between the products in the Progress portfolio. This continued innovation enables us to drive market adoption while delivering products that meet real enterprise customer needs.

On that last point, I've got a bit of a new role here. Or, better said, my role is being further formalized as Actional Product Evangelist. I'm very pleased to have the responsibility for socially-marketing some of the new integrations we are delivering to market. In particular, those integrations between products in the Progress portfolio and Actional, and between Actional and some partners. I'm hoping I can have a real impact with this formalization to my role, as well as some fun introducing Actional to some new technologies.

That said, my initial focus is going to be on IONA's Orbix, Progress OpenEdge, and Sun Glassfish. Glassfish support has been released, and both IONA and OpenEdge are in early trials (pre-beta). As I get organized around communicating these solutions, feel free to drop me a line with questions if you are interested in seeing what we've got!

Any existing Orbix customers interested in the Actional integration should contact your sales rep... or me. You're required to have Orbix 6 or later for Java (for now... we're working on the C++ and Java/C++ for Orbix 3, but they're not ready to trial yet).

PS Why not follow Maneesh Sahu (Sr. Solution Architect, Partners), Dion Picco (Engineering) , Frank Lynch (Sr. Solution Architect, East), or Marcelo Jabali (Sr. Solution Architect, West)?

SOA Infrastructure - Back to Future, No. 2

Is anyone talking about the enterprise service bus (ESB) anymore? My Google Alerts are slow and my Google Adwords program isn't performing. Could it be that everyone already has one? Is it assumed that everyone has one? WARNING: shameless promotion...

Did you know that Progress Software introduced the industry's first ESB? Actually, independent research firm, Forrester Research, Inc., named Progress® Sonic® ESB as a leader in the enterprise service bus (ESB) market in "The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Service Buses, Q1 2009" report. That seems like a big deal to me but yet I continue to have problems finding someone to blog or talk about it. Thankfully there's Hub Vandervoort, CTO, Progress Software. If you haven't had the opportunity to hear him speak, you are missing out. He's not only smart, he's personable, engaging, and always leaves me wanting to learn more.

This week I'd like to share a video that he did over a year ago. In this 4 minute video, Hub talks about what an ESB is, why you should deploy an ESB, and he also shares what makes the Sonic ESB unique.

Interested in more? Read Chapter 4 of Service Oriented Architecture: Getting IT Done Right. Chapter 4, entitled Enterprise Service Buses, is authored by Hub. In this chapter Hub shares his collective experience of working with over 300 ESB end-users, and summarizes the styles and applications of ESB technology.

Enjoy!