Flashline Introduces Governance Platform for Service-Oriented Architecture
Flashline for SOA manages Web services as a portfolio of assets to optimize agility
CLEVELAND -- September 26, 2005 -- Flashline® today announced Flashline for SOA, the next generation solution for the governance, registration, and lifecycle management of Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Extending industry-leading support for SOA and Web services, Flashline for SOA manages services with architecture, business processes, business services, applications, and related assets, enabling organizations to analyze the impact of change and maximize reuse for greater business agility.
Flashline for SOA takes a ground-breaking approach to SOA governance, focusing on architectural compliance and policy enforcement during the early planning and design phases of the service development lifecycle. By enforcing policy and alignment with architecture before services enter production, organizations can avoid costly interruptions in service at runtime and ensure that services are in compliance with architecture standards, quality levels and regulatory requirements.
One of the biggest issues in SOA adoption is identifying and controlling the complex, dynamic relationships inherent in SOA, which put projects at risk for late deliveries and cost overruns. Unlike other registries that manage only services, Flashline for SOA manages all software assets and the entire chain of asset dependencies-from fine-grained artifacts such as WSDL, XML schemas, and components to large-grained assets including business processes, business services, Web services, and applications in relationship to the projects that produce, maintain, or consume the assets. As a result, organizations gain complete traceability into SOA relationships and interdependencies so they can accurately perform impact analysis, mitigate project risk and facilitate reuse. This visibility also allows organizations to integrate their stand-alone Web services initiatives into the broader aspects of IT in planning, architecture and delivery.
Leading travel commerce firm Sabre Holdings is using Flashline to manage, publish, and track Web services, which provide functionality such as checking air fares or hotel rates. "We needed to give our customers and internal developers an easier way to learn about and incorporate our Web service architecture," states Bob Prevenslik, director of enabling services, Sabre Holdings. "With Flashline, we publish our Web services, including schemas, WSDL, and supporting assets, to help our developers and customers create applications that consume our services and content. We have over 2,600 subscriptions to nearly 200 Web service assets through Flashline and those numbers are continually increasing. Flashline has helped Sabre and our customers improve time-to-market and reduce development costs through SOA, Web services and asset reuse."
"No Web service is an island. If businesses are serious about improving flexibility and becoming more agile through service-oriented architecture, it is critical for them to manage their services together with the multitude of other related assets in the IT ecosystem," states Charles Stack, founder and CEO, Flashline. "By building on our extensive history of component and Web service reuse, Flashline for SOA provides the ideal platform for today's companies to manage services in alignment with business and architecture, govern for expected benefits and measure return on investment."
Serving as both a registry and repository for Web services and related assets, Flashline for SOA brings proven best practices and capabilities in governance, compliance and reuse to enterprise SOA initiatives. For organizations in the early stage of implementing Web services, Flashline for SOA, like a UDDI registry, serves as a collection point for services and supports runtime access to them. For organizations conducting a major migration to SOA, Flashline for SOA serves as the system of record for strategic enterprise SOA.
At the core of the solution is Flashline Registry(tm), which manages an organization's entire portfolio of software assets in alignment with architecture, business goals and portfolio investment strategies. Flashline for SOA enables organizations to:
Govern SOA: Using Flashline's automated usage tracking, prescriptive compliance templates, policies, and extensive analytics, executives can monitor where and how services are used, whether services are used in ways approved for the organization, and whether they comply with policies and architecture standards. Executives can monitor progress on the overall migration to SOA based on the services that are proposed, funded and completed.
Manage Service Lifecycle: In addition to service and asset visibility, Flashline for SOA supports the workflow for the entire lifecycle of services, from planning and design to development, publishing, production, versioning and retirement. Flashline for SOA introduces automated, one-step-publishing of Web services, and provides access to Web services that are still under development. This helps the organization plan how services will be used for business benefit and fosters collaboration. Managing retirement ensures an orderly migration from old and obsolete versions to new versions that better support the goals of the organization, and avoids duplicate maintenance.
Measure Ongoing Business Value: Robust measurement capabilities give managers the information they need to analyze and ensure service quality, track the value of services to the enterprise, understand the total cost of ownership at the component level and assess the benefit of SOA to the business.
Just as Flashline for SOA aggregates and augments Web services metadata from multiple sources, it also connects an entire SOA initiative to the rest of the enterprise so organizations can leverage existing tool investments and bring services management and reuse directly into existing environments.
Flashline for SOA can be extended with the options and tool adapters of the Flashline 5 product family, which include integrations with project portfolio management systems, executive dashboards, leading development environments, architecture modeling tools and other systems of record for IT and business. For more information contact info@flashline.com
About Flashline, Inc.
Flashline's award-winning software asset portfolio management solutions provide enterprise-wide visibility into an organization's software assets to reduce IT costs and improve business agility. For more information visit http://www.flashline.com .
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