WebLayers Automated Governance Helps Modernize Legacy Applications

05/22/2008

From Forrester's IT Forum 2008, WebLayers Inc., which automates SOA governance, released the latest version of its flagship product, WebLayers Center. Version 4.5 helps Fortune 500 and government organizations modernize their applications by taking a more comprehensive approach to governance as they transition their strategic business applications to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

ebizQ received the following:

Specifically, WebLayers Center 4.5 now offers mainframe governance capabilities, and support of common industry frameworks including IFX for Financial Services, ACORD for Insurance and OAGis for Manufacturing.

GE Money was one of the first companies to implement WebLayers Center 4.5. "WebLayers has the largest collection of pre-built governance policies, so was already our leading choice for automated governance," said Phil Provis, SOA Architect at GE Money. "But their unique ability to support the IFX framework – our chosen framework for policy management – in design time really won us over. Since implementing WebLayers, we've shortened our development cycles, and re-work has been reduced considerably."

---

Without proper governance SOA can become inflexible, expensive, and ultimately, ineffective. Learn effective SOA governance at this ebizQ webinar!

---

WebLayers is the market leader for automated SOA governance. The WebLayers Center family provides a policy-based approach to automate what has traditionally been a manual, labor-intensive process of defining and enforcing governance from design to deployment. The company expanded the scope of WebLayers Center based on research and direct customer feedback indicating there was a need to extend automated governance to applications that feed into SOAs.

According to the March 2008 Forrester report titled, SOA Adoption: Many Firms Got Started In 2007, "Client/server, object-orientation, and component-based development were never given industry-level credit for fostering strategic business transformation, which continues to emphasize that the market sees something very different in the value proposition for SOA," wrote Randy Heffner, VP. "While internal integration is consistently, year-over-year, the most common use of SOA — and indeed a very important foundational use for SOA — strategic transformation is a much more important use of SOA."

"Automated governance is crucial on any application modernization/transformation effort," said Gregg Bjork, CEO of WebLayers. "Service-enabling a legacy application is very complex, and seemingly minor problems with a service can have a domino effect in an SOA. Design-time governance helps ensure quality before new services go into production, when there's still time to fix things with minimal business impact. We’re very excited to be launching WebLayers Center 4.5, and grateful to customers like GE Money, Aetna, LabCorp and Nationwide whose early feedback was so vital during our development process."

Key Capabilities of WebLayers Center 4.5

• WebLayers Policy Manager automates the definition, association and management of governance policies and enforcement for industry standards (IFX, ACORD, OAGis) and mainframe assets including Cobol and non-source components such as JCL, ISAM, and VSAM.



• WebLayers Conformance Center provides visibility to development teams on proper usage -- If users deviate from the specification (either accidentally or intentionally), WebLayers Center will warn or prevent them from wasting time. Allows business partners to develop their services independently but you can maintain control before they are consumed – All services (internal or external) are automatically checked for conformance to standards before they are moved into production.



• WebLayers Governors ensure the enforcement of the right policies, at the right time, in the right context. WebLayers now has Governors that interface directly with a variety of IT infrastructure that run on the mainframe and open systems to govern mainframe assets including: Serena ChangeMan ZMF, IBM Rational ClearCase, WebSphere Service Registry and Repository for z/OS, Rational Developer for System z, Microsoft .NET and Logic Library.



• WebLayers Center Server runs within WebSphere Application Server for z/OS. WebLayers Center Server can also be deployed on Linux on IBM System z as well as a variety of other open systems and Windows platforms.



• WebLayers Policy Libraries provide the industry's largest collection of pre-built policies and today introduced a Mainframe Cobol Library and the following industry standards; IFX, ACORD, OAGis, SWIFTML, FIXML, and FpML.

WebLayers Center 4.5 is available immediately. WebLayers will demonstrate the software at Forrester’s IT Forum 2008, taking place May 20-23, 2008 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. For more information on WebLayers Center 4.5, visit www.WebLayers.com.

Home
Webinars
Blogs
ebizQ Forum
All Topics
Subscriptions
White Papers
Analyst Corner
Follow us on Twitter
Fan us on Facebook

Goals

Enabling Business Agility and Reuse
Improving Business Processes
Leveraging Information and Intelligence
Optimizing Business/IT Management
Leveraging the Connected Web
Securing Enterprise Applications
Supporting Industry Solutions

About Us
Editorial Calendar
Feedback
FAQ
Advertise With Us
Site Map
Privacy Policy
Unsubscribe