A week after BEA Systems added
integration to its WebLogic platform, SeeBeyond Tuesday
made its biggest technology overhaul since 1999 with the newest version of
the SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Networks Suite, v5.0.
SeeBeyond Senior Director of Corporate Marketing Richard Cramer said the
revamped suite features an openness heretofore absent from the application
integration suites created by competitors such as webMethods, Tibco, and
Vitria. In a departure from the modus operandi of creating proprietary
integration systems SeeBeyond is answering the customer demand for open
systems to gain trust in its revamped platform.
Simply, IT teams can now assemble Java applications built upon existing systems
and infrastructure even if the infrastructure has been crafted using
application servers and portals from competing vendors — built in different
development environments.
Cramer said SeeBeyond is going right for the core of what it and many
industry analysts believe is the evolutionary point of the EAI space,
namely, convergence. The maturation of EAI, in which legacy infrastructure is made to accommodate new products, the commoditization of
application servers, acceptance of portals, and progression of Web services,
Cramer argued, are all paving the way for a new breed of business
integration: one where disparate platforms and heterogeneous environments
work together.
On the latter score, the new products may all be viewed as Web services and
the suite relies heavily on business process standards such as ebXML
Even analysts have noted the change.
“The eAI market is going through significant upheaval,” commented Nick Gall,
senior vice president & principal analyst, Meta Group. “The biggest change
is the movement toward standards, including J2EE and emerging Web services.
Any vendor who does not fully endorse and adopt these standards will not be
able to compete.”
That’s what SeeBeyond has done with SeeBeyond Integrated Composite
Application Networks Suite v5.0.
The cornerstone product is the eGate Integrator 5.0, an integration platform
that supports open portability of integration logic across common
application servers. The eInsight Business Process Manager 5.0 is a business
process management solution that supports process simulation for activity
cost-based analysis and Web monitoring. eXchange Integrator 5.0 is an
application that defines trading partner profiles and protocol management
for B2B interoperability. It supports ebXML as well as provide the
industry’s first tool for supporting all open protocols as well as any
user-defined proprietary trading protocols.
eXpressway Integrator 5.0 is an application for the speedy packaging and
distribution of integrations. Integration providers are fond of adapters,
too, and SeeBeyond does not disappoint. It released the eWay Intelligent
Adapters 5.0 suite, a line of more than 80 pre-built adapters for common
applications and datastores. Lastly for the retooled suite, the eIndex
Global Identifier 5.0 is a patient indexing solution that makes Web-based
access and user configuration possible.
Cramer also discussed six new products from his firm. These tools address
newer, more specialized areas of business integration and include data
quality management, workflow and business activity monitoring. It even
includes portals for creating Web and wireless applications.
Specifically, these new products include: eVision Studio 5.0, an application
for enabling the rapid design and generation of interactive Web and wireless
applications without any programming, creating the business interfaces which
overlay composite applications and workflow management eView Studio 5.0, an
application for designing and generating “single view” applications for
matching and indexing user defined business objects.
The suite also includes eBAM Studio 5.0, a tool for designing and generating
Business Activity Monitors without programming; ePortal Composer 5.0, a
portal generation tool providing aggregation of any Web-based channel with
content personalization and administration services; eTL Integrator 5.0, an
extract, transform and load technology optimized for large record set and
build data scenarios; and eInsight Enterprise Service Bus 5.0, a limited edition
of eInsight built on a Web services-based architecture that uses BPEL4WS and
UDDI to coordinate enterprise Web services. This Enterprise Service Bus
edition provides a less expensive alternative to deploy composite
applications built on a services-oriented architecture.
SeeBeyond Integrated Composite Application Networks Suite 5.0 will be phased
over the next four months, with eGate Integrator
5.0 shipping to customers before March 31.
SeeBeyond Propels Business Integration with New Suite
