Forum Systems this week plans to unveil a new machine that lets enterprise
customers speed up, manage and secure Web services across various computer
networks.
While Forum has previously offered separate devices that secure, accelerates
and guides Web services
Service Enablement Platform (SEP) melds those three functions in one box.
Speed, security and management are important traits in an evolving age of
distributed computing: Customers are relying on hardware and software that
ensure reliable message delivery to complete sales, information exchanges or
other transactions.
Forum created DynamiX because traditional application servers and enterprise
service buses (ESB) have not been able catch up with the evolving
requirements for running fast, safe, and manageable Web services, said Walid
Negm, vice president at Forum.
Negm said app servers and ESBs
internal applications and processes, but fail to address the requirements of
XML-based Web services that get ferried from one machine to another in a
service-oriented architecture (SOA).
The executive said SOA computing requires new functions, including policy
enforcement, service virtualization, protocol translation, and XML
acceleration. DynamiX fits the bill, he said.
“Companies are looking to provide a layer for Web services to interact and
to track the details of those interactions and find patterns that are
synchronous and asynchronous,” said Negm.
“This product provides an enabling layer for the deployment of
service-oriented architectures and Web services.”
DynamiX’ value lies in the software, which includes an XML service bus to
provide asynchronous communication, callbacks and publish/subscribe
utilities.
The software also includes a service registry to aggregate, virtualize and
publish Web Services Description Language
the fly.
WSDL policy management, load balancing across multiple endpoints and
failover procedures also abound in DynamiX
ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said that Forum has previously offered
security and management capabilities.
“By adding reliable messaging, profile management, distributed transactions,
and complex event processing, they are now able to offer a much more
complete SOA intermediary offering, most similar to what, say, SOA Software
is offering,” Bloomberg said.
Negm said DynamiX will cost around $90,000 depending on what customers get
on the box.
The company will continue selling its Vantage acceleration appliance and
XWall firewall and Sentry management software tools as standalone products.
Jim Ricotta, vice president and general manager of IBM SOA appliances,
recently said at an IBM SOA appliance launch
that he expects the market for products that boost Web services and SOA
delivery to top $1 billion in the near future.
More broadly, the SOA market nearly doubled in 2005 to over $4 billion and
could top $14 billion by 2009.
