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The Global Integration Summit has a unique feature called the Integration Solution Showcase. It’s essentially a bake off between the participating vendors. They are each given an SOA solution to implement. This year the Accenture created the specs for the solution which was a bank mortgage lending solution. The solution accepted applications, verified name and address, checked credit score, identified appropriate mortgage product based on credit score and then prepared the application for closing.

Having sat through many hundreds of vendor briefings, I found it interesting and refreshing to hear the vendor pitches through the lens of how they each solved the solution – and each did it differently. The winner, voted by attendees and a panel of judges, was Above All Software.

Above All takes a rather unique approach to creating composite applications. They create services from existing applications, then combine these into higher level business services which are independent from the underlying applications. These services can be re-used across different scenarios, which made it very easy for Above All to handle the required changes that were given Monday night. The services are also used to resolve semantic differences across systems. An Above all application can support multiple thin, rich, mobile, portal and embedded clients

Above All’s approach is to mine the Web services supplied, catalog them in the Above All repository, then create a new object type called AnyBank Mortgage Application. They then refined the four services to resolve the non-MISMO and MISMO semantic differences. Then assembled the services into the composite application, and deployed them to their server.

The approach of making the mortgage application a separate object has some interesting payoffs down the road. In the extra time they had, for “extra credit” they deployed the application as a self-service application which enabled customers to consume the services as a pdf. They did not have to reassemble or redeploy any part of the application to enable this service. Using the same approach they deployed a browser based application to enable real estate brokers to submit load applications through a Salesforce.com UI. This is due to Above All’s Salesforce.com Knowledge Pack which automates the process of utilizing new services from the Salesforce.com interface. Above All has a number of Knowledge Packs available. Check the website for the full list. When the change requirement came through to handle a new service for high risk product pricing, they were able to do it reassemble the application or redeploy the pdf or Salesforce.com application, thereby demonstrating true agility in their solution.

Recently Above All launched a downloadable evaluation version of their software. Check it out, then share your experience here.

Posted by bethgb at 11:57 AM in | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us