Systinet Retools For SOAs

Systinet announced a new CEO and a slew of products geared to solidify its
status as a provider of distributed computing software, a move that positions the company to take advantage of the hot service-oriented architecture sector.

The Cambridge, Mass., company, which also banked $10.5 million in financing
led by Warburg Pincus, lured Thomas Erickson from webMethods as CEO. Erickson, an executive with expertise in Web services
and application integration, will replace CEO and Founder Roman Stanek, who
will become chief strategy office for the privately-held concern.

Systinet said in a press statement that Erickson will steer the small
company as it makes an aggressive charge at wrangling market share from
other companies fielding SOAs , distributed computing models
that often employ Web services to help companies
integrate their numerous applications.

The deal comes at a time when many enterprises in such lucrative fields as
financial services, insurance and retail are asking for a more simplified,
cost-effective infrastructure.

Erickson must guide Systinet, known primarily as a developer of Web services
and a solid UDDI registry, as it invests
in global sales, marketing, services and R&D to compete with other SOA
providers, both large and small.

IBM , Microsoft , Oracle and BEA Systems are the big fish in the pond, but Systinet will likely compete with Amberpoint,
Actional, Infravio, Cape Clear and a raft of other smaller vendors itching to grab pieces of the SOA and Web services pie.

Analysts expect
consolidation to continue until the sector is whittled down to a few strong rivals.

To help jumpstart its new focus, Systinet unveiled new development products that will serve as building blocks for SOAs, including the new Gateway 1.0, and
the latest, SOA-enabled versions of Systinet UDDI Registry 5.0 and Systinet
Server for Java 5.0 and C++ 5.0.

According to Systinet, Gateway 1.0 allows proprietary message-oriented
middleware (MOM) products, such as TIBCO Rendezous, IBM WebSphereMQ
(formerly MQ Series), SonicMQ to support any standards-based Web services
endpoint. Beginning at $25,000 per CPU, Gateway 1.0 supports reliable
communications, message persistence and multiple messaging patterns, along
with interoperability with application servers including Microsoft .NET, BEA
WebLogic, and Apache AXIS.

At $10,000 per CPU, UDDI Registry 5.0 makes it possible for developers to
discover and reuse Web services. Systinet Server for Java 5.0 (formerly WASP
Server for Java), is a server used for writing Java Web services, for $2,000
per CPU. Also for $2,000, Systinet Server for C++ 5.0 (formerly WASP Server
for C++), is a Web services server for C/C++ applications and includes full
support for WS-Security.

All of the software development packages are available now and support Web
services for multiple messaging-oriented middleware (MOM), the latest UDDI
Version 3 spec, and standards like WS-ReliableMessaging to facilitate
interoperability in Web services.

Systinet, whose customers include Societe Generale, Motorola and the U.S.
Department of Defense, is one of many vendors and organizations making enter
prise software announcements from the Gartner Application Integration and
Web Services Summit in Los Angeles Tuesday.

For example, the Web Services Interoperability organization published a draft of its Basic Security Profile 1.0, which is considered vital to
facilitating adoption of Web services and SOAs.