Vitria Technology has integrated Web services and business process
management in the latest version of its Web services module for its
BusinessWare platform.
The new version provides companies with a single environment for
business integration of everything from legacy applications to new
Web services and the ability to expose any component of the
integration solution as a Web service, according to Vitria.
To date, Web services have only been used to access simple
applications such as checking inventory levels or stock quotes,
said Suresh Chandrasekaran, senior director of product management
at Vitria. However, Vitria's solution will allow companies to make
the most of Web services, Chandrasekaran added.
"It can actually take the business integration itself or any
component of it, perhaps a process model or a transformation and
expose that as a Web service," he said. "That's different from
saying, 'I have a process model that can call a Web service.'
[Companies] can really start to build a services-oriented
application infrastructure. They can start combining traditional
business process management using the messaging-oriented model and
a services-oriented model."
Much of the potential promise of Web services lies in the notion of
componentising business processes and tying them together with Web
services into new applications. This would allow companies to adapt
applications to new customers and products while allowing IT
managers to modify applications' behaviour based on changes to
business processes.
Version 2.0 is designed to allow an enterprise to take any current
BusinessWare process or interface and define, compose, wrap, call,
and register it as an internal or external Web service. That makes
the process accessible to trading partners, regardless of what
internal systems the partners use.
The platform also has built-in functionality to allow a Web service
with multiple steps - such as applying for a loan application - to
hold data that is retrieved in real time until data that may take
longer to retrieve in subsequent steps is received, Chandrasekaran
said.
Because of Vitria's process management strength, it is in a better
position to build composite applications, said Jon Derome, an
analyst with the Yankee Group.
"Most integration vendors can consume or generate Web services, but
the problem is when you're building lots of Web services. What you
need is some kind of management capability to bind those pieces
appropriately."
Customers can implement their Web services in seconds using
Vitria's graphical wizard, which requires no custom coding, the
company said.
Vitria's Web Services module 2.0 supports industry standards
including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1, XML, XML
Schema, and Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1. It is
interoperable with .net and other SOAP servers for partner
integration.