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Iona Technologies, which makes SOA infrastructure software for enterprise users, on Dec. 4 announced the availability of Celtix Enterprise, the companys open-source Enterprise Service Bus.
Iona, based in Dublin, Ireland, with U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Mass., said Celtix Enterprise features enterprise-class ESB capabilities, backed by Ionas “world-class” services organization, which provides consulting, training and support.
Eric Newcomer, chief technology officer at Iona, said Celtix Enterprise has a lightweight, pluggable service engine that enables customers to deploy the base functionality necessary to achieve a projects goal, then add new capabilities as business and technology requirements evolve.
Moreover, with Celtix Enterprise, Iona brings together SOA (service-oriented architecture) standards and new SOA developments, including the Apache CXF project, also known as Apache CeltiXfire because it combines the Celtix effort with the Codehaus Xfire project.
Apache CXF is an incubator project, and Iona is using it to provide the services framework for Celtix Enterprise. Iona is also utilizing Eclipse-based tooling from the Eclipse SOA Tools Platform Project, which Iona is leading, and the Apache incubator project known as Qpid, to provide an open-source implementation of the AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) specification, company officials said.
“This is really about enterprise-class support for open-source SOA infrastructure,” Newcomer said. “Among Ionas customers are some the largest and most demanding IT shops in the world. So we know how to do 24/7 support for mission-critical environments. We know how to support heterogeneous environments because we are interoperability specialists, and SOA is all about interoperability. We are basically offering the economic and transparency benefits of open source with enterprise-class support.”
In addition to Celtix Enterprise, Iona announced the Celtix Advanced Service Engine, an open-source subscription offering based on the Apache Incubator CXF project. The Celtix Advanced Service Engine provides users with a small-footprint, pluggable service engine that lays the foundation for distributed SOA deployments, Newcomer said.
The Celtix Advanced Service Engine is a certified and tested distribution that is delivered along with enterprise-quality support, training and consulting provided by Iona services, the company said. The engine features support for a variety of standards, including SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) 1.1 and 1.2, JAX-WS (Java API for XML Web Services), WS-RM (Web Services-Reliable Messaging), Web Services-Addressing and Web Services-Security.
In addition, the Celtix Advanced Service Engine enables users to send SOAP or XML messages over HTTP, JMS (Java Message Service) or Jabber, while the extensibility API allows users to add bindings to support additional message formats. The flexible deployment model of the Celtix Advanced Service Engine supports the use of Apache Tomcat, Spring, JBI (Java Business Integration) or SCA (Service Component Architecture) containers, Java EE (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition), or stand-alone deployment.
Iona also announced the availability of Celtix Advanced Messaging, an open-source subscription delivering a technology-agnostic, standards-based open and interoperable messaging infrastructure that can be used in SOA deployments, the company said.
“This effort in general is aimed at providing an open-source alternative to expensive messaging systems such as IBM WebSphere MQ and TIBCO,” Newcomer said. “In the context of an SOA it provides support for event-based services and for applications that benefit from asynchronous message queuing, or store and forward messaging.”
Moreover, Celtix Advanced Messaging “is the first to market with enterprise-class services and support for AMQP, and we have already seen a lot of interest in this technology,” Newcomer said. “We think it has a very strong future, especially as a key foundation for loosely coupled SOA deployments.”