WSO2 Launches Carbon Modular Open-Source SOA Framework

Adoption of the Open Services Gateway initiative has paid off big-time for WSO2, which refers to itself as “the open-source SOA company,” as the company has reworked its application server and SOA platform based on OSGi.

WSO2 on Feb. 9 announced the launch of WSO2 Carbon, the company’s new fully componentized service-oriented architecture framework based on the OSGi specification.

“This is all based on OSGi; we couldn’t have done all of this without OSGi,” said Sanjiva Weerawarana, founder and CEO of WSO2.

WSO2 Carbon enables an entire SOA platform comprising integrated middleware components. With Carbon, developers can easily deploy only those components they need—and eliminate the complexities of middleware integration—to achieve savings in SOA project time, money and staffing.

Meanwhile, WSO2 announced the first four WSO2 products based on the Carbon framework: WSO2 WSAS (Web Services Application Server) 3.0, WSO2 ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) 2.0, WSO2 Registry 2.0 and the new WSO2 BPS (Business Process Server)—WSO2’s first business process management offering. The company said componentized versions of the WSO2 Mashup Server and WSO2 Data Services are expected to roll out in mid-2009.

The componentized WSO2 products run on a common Carbon framework, which provides such capabilities as management, security, clustering, logging, statistics and tracing, as well as ease-of-use capabilities such as the “Try-It” testing function, for all of the SOA components that make up these products, the company said. And a graphical unified management console can be used to deploy, manage and view services, processes, process instances and statistics across any SOA components being used, WSO2 officials said.

“WS02 is now taking advantage of this componentization in order to deliver more flexible SOA stacks,” said James Governor, principal analyst at market research firm RedMonk.

Weerawarana said the Carbon plug-and-play architecture fundamentally changes the way developers implement SOA middleware. For example, no longer is it necessary to download and implement both the WSO2 WSAS and WSO2 ESB as separate products. Instead, developers who need Web services integration can choose to start with the ESB product, which includes the core Carbon framework. If required, they can then add WSAS components such as Java service hosting and data services components, and these will automatically utilize the core Carbon framework and console.

Similarly, to add simple process management, users can download the relevant WSO2 BPS components, rather than the entire product, said Weerawarana.

“Customers increasingly see the need for an SOA platform offering, but the complexity and size of today’s SOA suites is preventing many from moving forward,” Weerawarana said in a statement. “The WSO2 Carbon platform offers a complete solution with less complexity and more flexibility—companies can truly use just what they need.”