News

Actional, Systinet to build new Web services platform

• By Rich Seeley
• July 2, 2003

Two Web services start-ups are joining forces to provide what some industry experts, including Forrester Research analysts, say is not available from major vendors -- a "complete Web services platform."

Insiders told XML Report this week that Cambridge, Mass.-based Systinet Corp. (www.systinet.com), a maker of Web services infrastructure software, and Actional Corp. (www.actional.com), a Mountain View, Calif.-based integration software provider, will disclose plans next week to join forces to create a platform designed to fill in the Web services blanks that have been widely identified by industry analysts.

Part of the partnership agreement calls for Systinet to embed Actional Active Agent technology in its Wasp Server platform, providing a direct link to the Actional Web Services management technology, according to information the two companies provided to XML Report. In turn, Actional will resell Systinet Wasp server as a component of its Web services management platform, according to executives at both companies.

James Phillips, Actional senior vice president, explained how the software products from the two partners interact.

"For any Web services provider that you have or if your providing Web services out of an application server, Actional Active Agent technology injects instrumentation and control capabilities into the application server," he said. "The Systinet Wasp server will now come with an Actional Active Agent embedded. Any customer that uses that technology and that platform for developing and deploying Web services will have an out-of-the-box connection to the Actional Web services platform."

In the architecture envisioned for the two vendors' joint offering, Actional's Looking Glass monitoring system and console will oversee the interaction of all the software in the Web services platform. This will provide IT staff with an assessment of how the overall Web services applications are performing, and includes warnings of trouble spots and bottlenecks, Phillips said.

The partnership came about because the two vendors found themselves providing parts of the Web services infrastructure to the same organizations, said Gregg Bjork, senior vice president at Systinet. Developers starting with Systinet's developer tools later incorporated Actional to monitor the Web services. Bjork said that the partnership makes it possible for Systinet to introduce organizations to the Actional monitoring technology early in the Web services development cycle.

"Maybe they are starting to look at different management challenges they might have and we'll be able to introduce them to Actional," Bjork said.

The two partners are already working together with customers, including New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., which is taking a SOA approach to developing Web services capabilities for reporting to federal regulatory agencies, Actional's Phillips said.