Partners will play a big role in seeing Microsoft's "Oslo" service-oriented architecture strategy to fruition.REDMOND, Wash.—As part of its ongoing strategy to deliver more service-oriented architecture enabling technology and guidance to its customers, Microsoft and some of its partners have announced new SOA offerings.
For its part, Microsoft released the first public CTP (Community Technology Preview) of its MSE (Microsoft Managed Services Engine) to its CodePlex community development site. A company official announced the release at the Microsoft SOA and business process conference here on Oct. 30.
According to a Microsoft overview describing MSE, it enables service virtualization through a service repository, which helps organizations deploy services faster, coordinate change management, and maximize the reuse of various service elements.
"In doing so, the MSE provides the ability to support versioning, abstraction, management, routing, and runtime policy enforcement for services," the overview said.
Burley Kawasaki, director of the Microsoft Connected Systems Division, said the MSE is one approach to facilitating Enterprise SOA through service virtualization. MSE is built on top of Microsofts Windows Communication Foundation and the Microsoft Server Platform. The Microsoft Services group built the technology to help customers address the challenges of SOA in the enterprise, he said.
Click here to read more about Microsoft plan to bring software modeling to the masses.
The group released its 6.2 CTP to CodePlex on Oct. 30. It is the first of many releases of the MSE that will appear on CodePlex, Kawasaki said. The intent of this version is to solicit feedback on the architecture, the components, their application, and the documentation, he added.
Moreover, the unfolding Microsofts SOA strategy, particularly as the company embarks on its broad effort—code-named "Oslo"—to include modeling and model-driven development into the equation, will be dependent on the input of the companys partner ecosystem, Kawasaki said.
Meanwhile, one Microsoft partner in attendance at the SOA conference, JNBridge, based in Boulder, Colo., announced a set of new JMS (Java Message Service) adapters: the JNBridge JMS Adapter for .Net and the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server.
The new adapters provide a streamlined and automated method to connect JMS capabilities to Microsoft.NET Framework applications and BizTalk Server to accelerate the delivery of new software products and services to the enterprise.
Dino Chiesa, Microsofts director of marketing for the .Net Platform, said technology like the JNBridge adapters highlight how the Microsoft solution is interoperable with other environments.
Click here to read more about Microsofts "Oslo" and model-driven development.
"As customers use the .Net Framework and BizTalk Server as a foundation for their enterprise information systems, interoperability is a key requirement," Chiesa said. "These new JMS adapters from JNBridge allow customers that already have Java-based messaging systems to connect to those systems from .Net and BizTalk programs. Interoperability between .Net or BizTalk applications and JMS systems just got a whole lot easier."
Meanwhile, Microsoft partners Accenture and Avanade teamed up to put on a "solutions showcase" at the Microsoft event. At the conference, Accenture and Avanade debuted a prototype human resources application built using Microsofts SOA technologies including BizTalk Server 2006 R2. Company officials said the prototype cut processing time by as much as 60 percent over existing systems built using other technology.
Kawasaki said Accenture and Avanade are two of Microsofts partners that have been brought in early on the companys overall SOA direction and the Oslo strategy.
And although many of the Oslo components are some time away from delivery, Kawasaki said it is Microsofts hope that "when many of the Oslo technologies RTM [release to manufacturing], well have a set of supporting products from our ecosystem ready to go as well."
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