Open source integration is coming of age. IONA is sponsoring an open source ESB - the ObjectWeb Celtix open. Now there is open source integration for the SMB market. Jitterbit recently released their 1.0 version designed for the SMB market. Jitterbit is designed to provide quick and easy point-to-point integrations. It provides dialog boxes and drag and drop transformation. Once the integration is defined, it can be exported it into an XML document and be packaged as a Jitterpak which describes all aspects of an integration. Jitterpaks can be emailed, put on website to be downloaded, shared with a community, or even sold. There are Jitterpaks available for Salesforce.com. Jitterbit also plans to release Jitterpaks for QuickBooks and Great Plains.

Jitterbit supports Web Services, XML Files, HTTP/S, FTP, ODBC, flat and hierarchic file structures and file shares. It can be downloaded for free at http://www.jitterbit.com. Check it out. And let me know if you do.

Posted by bethgb in Vendor Briefings | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently caught up with Avigdor Luttinger, VP Marketing and Corporate Strategy at Magic Software at the IC Global Integration Conferece. Having listened to hundreds upon hundreds of vendor briefings, it's very rare that I come away thinking that the vendor has nailed the strategy. More often they seem to be chasing windmills. But in this case, I was extremely impressed with Magic's strategy, which seems to be working for them very well. Magic formed an alliance with SAP last Sept. to provide integration to the SMB market. Through that alliance they have 9 partners who have done three or more projects using Magic, 30-40 who are now in their first project, and a pipeline of 40 partners queuing up for training before beginning their first project. That's certainly a successful strategy.

Magic is also focusing on the AS400 market. This seems like an interesting niche as few other integration products even run on the AS400, and there are a lot of AS400s out there. Trouble is many of those AS400 shops are SOA laggards - they just don't get it yet. As a proof point, I sat with one at lunch. He said he really didn't see the need for SOA in his organization. Nightly batch using ETL tools is all they need or want. BUT ... they are starting to move towards BPM. When you start optimizing business processes, the usual outcome is the need to integrate stovepipe applications. I predict they will hit that wall pretty soon into their first implementation. The need for greater business agility is a great equalizer - hitting large, medium and small organizations alike.

Magic's iBolt will be a good solution for SMB or even ISVs. It's a completely integrated model and rules driven environment. Slick. If you're an AS400 shop and actully reading this blog you're probably ahead of the game. But if you are and want to argue about the need to SOA, I'd love to talk to you. As the Borg would say, I firmly believe that SOA is inevitably in your future.

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I recently spoke with two vendors with rules-based solutions, both of whom have announced significant new product releases, each with very different types of solutions, but both of which have their place in an SOA infrastructure.

Pegasystems announced Pega 5.1. This first new release in 2 years is focused on ease of use. The new browser based user interface incorporates Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) for interactive capabilities formerly only available in fat client applications. For example, you can mouse over a row or column and bring up additional information. The new version is designed to make it easier for novice users to be productive in the environment. Whereas the old version exposed all the rules, the new version uses wizard-like interfaces to expose only the rules necessary for the task at hand.

Pegasystems SmartBPM Suite uses rules to make business processes easier to change. For example, the localization capabilities make it possible to develop the process once, and deploy everywhere changing the rules where necessary for localization and internationalization requirements. Pegasystems also offers industry frameworks to fast track solutions. The Insurance Framework has over 80,000 objects available, making industry solutions faster and easier to implement. Pegasystems also have frameworks for healthcare, customer service management, and compliance.

A new important capability now available is Rule Conflict Analysis which provides the ability to automatically find unreachable logic in decision trees and tables. It can detect whether a condition is unreachable, contradictory, or incomplete. The system can then give a warning at the development stage. The earlier these issues are detected, the easier and less costly they are to fix. This capability significantly helps improve the quality and reliability of the design and reduces the skill sets necessary to achieve it.

Pegasystems is a BPM solution well suited to automating complex decision intensive processes, including human workflow. Check out Pegasystems: http://www.pega.com/

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When the announcement crossed my desk that on May 4 Unisys was announcing a deeper partnership with JBoss to provide open source SOA it caught my eye and I asked for a briefing. Open source SOA from a stalwart mainframe company? Interesting to say the least.

UniSys announced that it has become a premier worldwide JBoss Authorized Service Partner (JASP). Unisys will provide expertise around JBoss product design, integration and implementation. Unisys has integrated the JBoss Application Server with the Unisys Communication Ensemble and the Unisys Media Ensemble, and is integrating the JBoss Application Server across the Unisys server line.

So how does a mainframe company make money on open source? The answer is services. In the early 90’s as distributed platforms started to usurp the mainframe’s power, Unisys focused on brining mainframe reliability and scalability to open system platforms, and they continue to focus on adding value to open source platforms. In fact, today 83% of Unisys’ business is in services. They have a methodology to help companies move toward SOA, wrapping mainframe functionality as Web services, and move to open source platforms. Unisys also offers technology, such as their server platforms, as management software such as Application Defender which scans all J2EE applications and identifies and patches security holes in them.

Unisys’ market is their top 500 clients world wide which account for 85% of revenue. Clearly Unisys has found a way to stay relevant with their customers. Now Unisys can boast of being a 1-stop shop for training, consulting, migration services, and support licenses for JBoss.

While it sounds to me like Unisys has found a niche for itself to stay relevant with its customers, it has left me wondering about the future of open source SOA. On one hand are the promised of lower software licenses. But how many vendors will you need to deal with? Can you get all the support you need to be successful with SOA? What will you need to be successful?

How many of you out there are now pursuing open source SOA solutions? I would be very interested in hearing your experiences.

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