New IBM SOA Business Catalog Provides Industry's Most Comprehensive Resource for Software Code, Intellectual Property, and Best Practices
PARIS --13 June 2006. . . IBM today announced that its comprehensive resource to find reusable IT services based on IBM and business partner software is now available. The IBM SOA Business Catalog allows customers to search for information on SOA assets or IT "services," combinations of software code, intellectual property and best practices, used to solve specific business problems. Recent studies have shown that reusing existing assets can help build a SOA up to five times faster.
By the end of the year IBM’s SOA Business Catalog is expected to include more than 3,000 SOA assets spanning more than 15 industries to solve specific business problems. It directs customers to the appropriate IBM or validated business partner software including process templates, web services, tools and adapters along with details on how customers can easily obtain and integrate these IT services into existing IT infrastructures.
“IBM’s SOA Business Catalog delivers on the promise of reusing IT components,” said Sandy Carter, vice president WebSphere and SOA, IBM. “The ability to find and obtain detailed information on specific validated IBM and business partner assets –and reuse those assets time and gain—will enable customers to use and SOA to cut costs and increase revenue faster that developing individual IT services over and over again.”
Reusable IT services that can be found in SOA Business Catalog include:
The IBM Information Framework Process Models: Financial services models designed for business transformation re-engineering processes, regulatory alignment, and workflow automation through best practice process references and content-rich templates. The models allow users to analyze processes from both a technical and business perspective, and provide the discipline and consistency required to effect enterprise-wide transformational change.
The IBM Insurance Application Architecture: Architectural blueprint with detailed insurance business content that can be applied to initiatives on an enterprise-wide or specific project basis. It enables insurers to create detailed specifications and cross-enterprise architectures for information systems. These models represent over 300 cumulative person-years of development, incorporating input from many leading insurance organizations.
WebSphere Business Modeler industry-specific sample modeling projects: These sample help business users examine the impact process modeling can have to the business. The projects include various modeling constructs, elements, and potential methods to create SOA projects focused on business improvements. Sample models include Mortgage Application, insurance claims, produce invoice payment for retail, DSL Provisioning for telecom and Supplier Forecasting for industrial.
WebSphere DataStage TX Industry Pack for HL7: Integrates healthcare industry standard data formats with existing infrastructures. It enables developers, testers, and the production staff to accomplish more through deeper integration with their enterprise environments.
IBM QuickStart for WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus: Helps architect, design, develop and deploy a WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
IBM Rational Unified Process (RUP) for User Experience Modeling v4.0: Provides a set of best practices to simplify the development, analysis and design and testing of new models activities, and test models.
The IBM SOA Business Catalog will soon link to the WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) which allows software assets and associated metadata to be catalogued and stored in the repository enabling optimized access from all elements of the SOA lifecycle. WSRR delivers strong governance capabilities for the publication, discovery, subscription, management and policy enforcement of SOA services and assets.
IBM business partners with IT services that have been validated and are now part of IBM SOA Business Catalog include Actuate Software, AdminServer, Inc, Alphinat, Argo, China Systems Corp., Chordiant, Clear2Pay, Cognos Inc., Cúram, eMeter, i2 Technologies Inc., Ilog, Inc, ItemField, Lawson, Mincom, Napersoft, Inc, Nimaya. Research in Motion, SSA Global, and TrueDemand.
IBM’s SOA Business Central can be accessed at http://www.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/soabusinesscatalog_overview.