IBM Announces SOA Business Catalog

IBM Announces SOA Business Catalog
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Research suggests that despite vendor spending, SOA adoption is slow, at best.IBM is doing its part in furthering the service-oriented architecture movement. The company announced June 13 its namesake SOA Business Catalog, a services repository of sorts that allows users to search for information on SOA services.

The searchable services are really a combination of software code, intellectual property and industry-based best practices culled from internal—think WebSphere—and partner offerings. The catalog leads users to IBM and partner software that includes process templates, Web services, tools, adapters and integration instructions.

IBM anticipates that by the end of this year its SOA Business Catalog will include more than 3,000 services spanning more than 15 industries.

The SOA Business Catalog will link to IBMs WSSR (WebSphere Service Registry and Repository) that catalogs and stores Web services or software metadata for specific services. It also provides governance capabilities that help with the publication, discovery and management of services.

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"IBMs SOA Business Catalog delivers on the promise of reusing IT components," Sandy Carter, vice president of WebSphere and SOA at IBM, said in a statement. "The ability to find and obtain detailed information on specific validated IBM and business partner assets—and reuse those assets time and again—will enable customers to use SOA to cut costs and increase revenue faster than developing individual IT services over and over again."

To date, the services available in IBMs SOA Business Catalog include process models for the financial services and insurance industries, as well as models for additional vertical industries. Theres also a WebSphere DataStage TX Industry Pack for HL7 that integrates health care industry standard data formats with existing infrastructures and a QuickStart for WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus that helps architects develop and deploy an ESB.

(IBMs Rational Process for User Experience Modeling 4.0 is included as a guide to help users develop, analyze, design and test models.)

The IBM Information Framework Process Models for financial services allow users to analyze processes from both a technical and business perspective. The Insurance Application Architecture blueprint, on the other hand, enables users to create specifications for information systems architecture.

IBM partners that have validated services included in the SOA Business Catalog include Actuate Software, AdminServer, Alphinat, Argo, China Systems, Chordiant, Clear2Pay, Cognos, Cúram, eMeter, i2 Technologies, Ilog, ItemField, Lawson, Mincom, Napersoft, Nimaya, Research in Motion, SSA Global and TrueDemand.

IBM isnt alone in developing a Web services repository. Major business applications vendors SAP and Oracle are also building out their own Web services registries that will catalog and store the services related to their software. Its still unclear, however, how the various services repositories from vendors will interoperate—or whether users will need to subscribe to a variety of repositories to be able to effectively create composite applications based on a variety of services culled from different vendors.

Next Page: SOA adoption: Slow go.

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