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Vendors Using Survey Tools for SOA

Software providers focusing on service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions are increasingly offering assessment tools and forming partnerships to reach potential enterprise customers.  Here are a few of those developments and new product announcements to date.

Software AG, in conjunction with Forrester Consulting, has developed a survey tool for CIOs that helps them assess the value of an SOA. The company's SOA Value Assessment tool is a questionnaire that Software AG uses to identify IT and business processes that can be improved. Software AG delivers a custom report based on the survey data. Interested parties can register for the assessment at http://www.soavalueassessment.com.

Partnerships
Azora Technologies, a provider of SOA technology and consulting services, is working with SOA Software on an effort to educate customers on SOA projects. The focus will be on architecture and governance, which are "critical success factors" in an SOA, according to an announcement issued by the companies. The collaboration involves SOA Software's management, security and run-time governance solutions.

Azora is also working on a collaborative SOA educational effort with Crossvale, a provider IT and training services to Fortune 2000 customers. 

New Products
GroundWork Open Source has released a new version of its flagship network monitoring product that includes a SOA development framework. In addition, the company is offering a new product called GroundWork Factory that enables service level management capabilities. A single monitoring server can now handle hundreds of hosts using the GroundWork Monitor Professional product, according to an announcement issued by the company. 

Dassault Systèmes is offering a new version of its product lifecycle management solution that supports SOA for enterprise collaboration efforts. The company's Enovia Matrix 10.7.1 solution enables searching, navigation and collaboration using product lifecycle management data from multiple sources.

HCL Technologies has released two solutions for Tibco-based solution development for SOAs. The CrossFit framework from HCL enables application integration testing and the company's ProccessWatch framework allows process and business activity monitoring.

Green Hat has extended its automated testing tools for SOA projects that use Tibco's solutions. The company's GH Performance Testing product allows users to estimate traffic handling while running multiple services simultaneously.

Advanced BusinessLink is offering an SOA development framework that supports the IBM System i platform. The new Strategi SOA solution from Advanced BusinessLink helps developers create Web-based application programming interfaces to deliver services from legacy applications built on RPG or COBOL programming languages.

Voxware is touting the SOA aspects of its supply-chain logistics software and has released a new edition of its voice technology product, Voxware 3.0. The product allows inventory management using multiple languages. It features quick implementation via "user-based configuration" rather than relying on code generation.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is online news editor, Enterprise Group, at 1105 Media Inc.