Actional 6.0 SOA Management Platform Adds Business Process Visibility, Automated Runtime Governance, and "Trust Zones" Security
Release is first to market with new capabilities to meet needs of rapidly maturing SOA market
BEDFORD, Mass. -- February 27, 2006 -- Sonic Software, an operating unit of Progress Software Corp., announces the availability of Actional(TM) 6.0, the latest release of its award-winning management platform for service-oriented architecture (SOA). This release marks a new generation of SOA management technology with the introduction of Business Process Visibility(TM) (BPV), the first business process-centric approach to SOA visibility and management. Actional 6.0 allows business and IT users to gain a comprehensive view of individual business processes and their supporting business services and IT infrastructure, while simultaneously enforcing policies at the business-process level.
Unlike the previous generations of SOA management, which provide only infrastructure-centric management of discrete services, Actional 6.0 allows organizations to discover end-to-end business processes as they execute individual business transactions, and then to manage the SOA from a business process-centric perspective, as well as manage individual business services.
"As SOA evolves as a key competitive factor for enterprises, SOA visibility and governance become business imperatives. Yet most organizations are flying blind when it comes to managing their SOA environments," said Dan Foody, chief technology officer for Sonic Software. "Actional has long provided the ability to discover and govern individual services and independent transactions; Actional 6.0 brings SOA management to the next level, enabling organizations to take control of their SOA by providing visibility from a business perspective and delivering true end-to-end governance."
Additional major functionality in Actional 6.0 includes automated runtime governance, which provides auto-discovery and auto-enforcement of policies for services and processes, and "Trust Zones" security to prevent unauthorized or non-compliant usage of services, deterring potential attacks within the SOA network. Actional 6.0 also delivers a new Web-based graphical user interface (GUI), enhanced standards support, and an expanded range of platform support.
Key Capabilities in Actional 6.0
Business Process Visibility(TM)
Actional 6.0 is the first SOA management platform to go beyond a service-by-service approach to visibility, governance and process optimization, allowing organizations to create "business flow maps" which are derived from actual transactions which show how each process utilizes individual services and their supporting IT infrastructure.
Actional 6.0 also allows business users to customize a Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) dashboard to report critical business indicators such as units shipped, time from order-to-cash or average order size, based directly on business processes as they execute. IT users gain access to key operational metrics such as failed transactions or service availability for the same business processes.
Automated Runtime Governance
Actional 6.0 solves a fundamental issue facing virtually every production SOA deployment: rogue services and processes that can introduce operational and security risks. Actional 6.0 is the first SOA management platform to address this problem by automatically discovering services, including rogue services, the instant they are deployed, and automatically enforcing applicable business, IT and security policies. As a result, businesses can significant reduce the risk associated with rogue services and processes and dynamically bring them into alignment with defined policies.
Additionally, Actional 6.0 is fully integrated with UDDI v.3 service registries, such as the recently released Systinet 2. This capability allows organizations to define a 'closed loop' process for end-to-end SOA governance, ensuring not only that defined policies are enforced at runtime, but also that runtime realities are accurately reflected in the registry.
Trust Zones
Trust Zones, also new in Actional 6.0, allow customers to secure an end-to-end process flow and create a central, policy-based means for enforcing process-level security. Trust Zones prevent unauthorized, non-compliant usage of services and alleviate potential attacks within the SOA network.
According to Jeffrey D. LoVetere, software architect for Pfizer Global R&D Informatics, an early adopter of Actional 6.0, "the Trust Zone feature further enhances our existing security model, by allowing us to secure our business processes from end-to-end, essentially closing off vulnerabilities along the 'last mile' in our SOA network, and preventing potential governance issues."
Additional Actional 6.0 Enhancements
New Web-based GUI optimized for managing enterprise SOAs with thousands of services, with an enhanced AJAX-based UI
Standards Support dynamic security policy support for consumers and providers based on WS-Policy, WS-SecurityPolicy and WS-MetaDataExchange; and support for WS-ReliableMessaging
Extended Platform Support includes monitoring for SAP Netweaver, Cisco AON, and Sonic ESB®. Also includes an SDK for developing monitoring points for custom stacks and applications.
Availability
Actional 6.0 will be available on March 6, 2006.
Join Sonic Software for an introduction to Actional 6.0 on Wednesday, March 15th at 1:00 p.m. ET. To register, go to http://www.actional.com/news_events/events/.
About Actional Products
Actional products provide enterprise-grade SOA management capabilities, including service and message flow monitoring, SLA governance, versioning, and security at extremely low overhead and thus minimal impact on system performance.
About Sonic Software Sonic Software is the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB), a new communication and integration infrastructure that supports the enterprise requirements of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Sonic's technology delivers the scalability, security, continuous availability and management capabilities necessary to connect, integrate, and control distributed, mission critical business processes. Sonic Software is an operating unit of Progress Software Corporation, a global software industry leader. Sonic Software can be reached on the Web at http://www.sonicsoftware.com or by phone at +1-781-999-7000 or 1-866-GET-SONIC.