Infravio Registers Itself in SOA Management Space
Type: Competitive Intelligence Brief
Analyst: S. Willett
Report Date: April 20, 2005
Module: Application Infrastructure
ID: CIR13604 |
Current Perspective: Positive/Neutral
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: Moderate/Low |
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Summary
Event Summary
April 18, 2005 — Infravio, Inc., a leading provider of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Web Services Management products, announced extended UDDI features in the new release of its business-focused SOA registry, Infravio X-Registry. The move improves interoperability with the standard for Web Services registries with SOA governance, Web Service Delivery Contracts, and functionality that reflects Infravio's tremendous depth of customer experience with real-world business requirements for SOA. Infravio is demonstrating Infravio X-Registry at the Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Summit in Los Angeles, CA, April 18-20.
Analytical Summary
• Current Perspective: Slightly positive on Infravio’s new version of its SOA management, X-Registry 4.7, as the UDDI registry and telecom features will help the firm gain some recognition in this crowded market.
• Vendor Importance: High to Infravio, as this represents the next version of its flagship product.
• Market Impact: Low to moderate on the SOA management market, as the improvements in UDDI registry support will likely be imitated, especially with the advent of UDDI version 3.
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Perspective
Current Perspective: Positive/Neutral
We are taking a slightly positive stance on Infravio’s release of X-Registry 4.7, the latest version of its SOA management product. The company has centralized discovery and management into a UDDI directory, which could give it an advantage in terms of ease of use and configuration. In particular, X-Registry uses the UDDI registry to store a directory of available services, for easy discovery by internal or external users. The firm however, has extended UDDI so it can store information about who has rights to access the service, and what security mechanisms should be put in place for a user. There is an attached LDAP instance to help define the actual security for users, or administrators can tap into existing third-party LDAP or security products. The X-Registry can also be used for “service delivery contracts,” which basically can define the performance required for a user or group of users. These can then refer to rules built into the firm’s service brokers, which regulate access to services, performance load balancing, and failover, among other things. These service delivery contracts can be purely a matter for IT governance, or can be more of a business type rule that defines performance for groups of users or customers in a commercial environment. Infravio is also attempting to appeal to the telecom market with support for telecom-specific taxonomies. These taxonomies are important in defining service contracts or in pre-built processes around service approval, rollout, or availability. Another feature that could appeal to telcos is the ability to store any type of service, including CORBA IDLs, or custom operations as a service in their directory. Since many telcos have an extremely customized environment, they are self-defining what a service is in their own interest.
On the negative side, Infravio is not following UDDI 3.0 for its extensions, which could cause problems down the road when (and if) UDDI 3.0 takes off. There is evidence that other vendors are looking very seriously at 3.0 due to its extensibility options through “tModels.” Also, while the X-Registry can store non-Web Services services, they are not included in enforcement procedures. This is an issue in many large sites (telcos in particular) where IT is self-defining what a service is according to the characteristics of their own network. Infravio and others in this space need to figure out a way to accommodate these large and important users.
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Positives and Concerns
Competitive Positives
• Infravio releases the next version of its SOA management product, X-Registry 4.7, with support for a UDDI 2.0 registry that stores a variety of information about a service. Infravio retains a few differentiators in the crowded SOA management space, including a process tool and (now) centralized management through the registry.
• In particular, X-Registry uses the UDDI registry to store a directory of available services, for easy discovery by internal or external users. The firm, however, has extended UDDI so it can store information about who has rights to access the service and what security mechanisms should be put in place for a user. There is an attached LDAP instance to help define the actual security for users, or administrators can tap into existing third-party LDAP or security products.
• The X-Registry can also be used for “service delivery contracts,” which basically can define the performance required for a user or group of users. These can then refer to rules built into the firm’s service brokers, which regulate access to services, performance load balancing, and failover. These service delivery contracts can be purely a matter for IT governance, or can be more of a business-type rule that defines performance for groups of users or customers in a commercial environment. Although such rule-based approaches are not uncommon in the SOA management world, having them in a centrally managed directory can be an advantage.
• One of Infravio’s big differentiators is a process tool that can be used for a variety of purposes. It can be used to approve a new service, or to roll out a service. This could help solve the issue of IT governance on services that have the potential to cause havoc with carefully planned IT environments.
• Infravio is also attempting to appeal to the telecom market with support for telecom-specific taxonomies. These taxonomies are important in defining service contracts or in pre-built processes around service approval, rollout, or availability. Another feature that could appeal to telcos is the ability to store any type of service, including CORBA IDLs, or custom operations as a service in their directory. Since many telcos have an extremely customized environment, they are self-defining what a service is in their own interest.
Competitive Concerns
• Infravio’s use of a UDDI directory for contract and other information is not new, and there is evidence it will be the common way to store services-related information. SOA Software (see “SOA Software Provides Window into Services Management” April 4, 2005), webMethods, and others have indicated that they are in fact going down this route.
• Infravio is not making use of the extensions available in UDDI 3.0, and has in fact written its own extensions. It is not clear if it intends to move to full UDDI 3.0 compliance in the future.
• SOA management as a standalone market is being threatened by larger players that are putting SOA management as part of a larger suite of integration and/or management products. HP, BEA, webMethods, and Oracle are examples of this trend.
• While the X-Registry can store non-Web Services services, they are not included in enforcement procedures.
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Recommended Actions
Recommended Vendor Actions
• Infravio should eventually move to UDDI 3.0 compliance in its registry, as this could be a key factor to working with other software products.
• The company should attempt to include support for non-Web Services (SOAP/WSDL) services in its enforcement. Working on vertical lines, it should find common services in the telco environment (e.g., perhaps just WSDL contracts) and support them. It should also include a toolkit that allows users to regulate their own self-defined services.
• Since IT governance is a differentiator for Infravio, it should encapsulate best practices in templates for rolling out new services. These should basically take into consideration the load capacity of back-end systems, peak use times, etc. These best practices should be culled from initial user experiences.
Recommended Competitor Actions
• Competitors in the SOA management space should consider moving to the UDDI 3.0 registry as an organizing agent for SOA management. With the new “tModel” extensions,” vendors will be able to put a wide variety of information in the directory, including rules regarding performance and security.
• Competitors should not at this time release any telecom or other vertical editions of their products, but should pay attention to the technical needs of financial, insurance, and telecom users and put support into their products.
• Competitors in the SOA management space should not necessarily put out a full-bore process tool, but should encapsulate issues around IT governance, particularly capacity planning, in their products. This can be achieved through professional services help and methodologies, as well as software Q&As and suggested implementation plans.
• Competitors in the integration space should consider some elements of SOA management in their products going forward.
Recommended End User/Customer Actions
• End users should consider the Infravio SOA management product due to its maturity and its reliance on standards such as UDDI. Users however, should be aware that this market is rapidly changing and consolidating and many vendors are putting SOA management as part of larger suites of integration and/or management products.
• End users should consider UDDI, particularly UDDI 3.0, as a way to organize not only discovery of services, but to store information regarding rules on performance, availability, user security, etc.
• Users implementing SOAs in their firms should realize that an overarching management and configuration product will probably be necessary to regulate and monitor these services.
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