Integration software vendor webMethods has announced a major
overhaul of its flagship integration platform that deepens its Java
support, bundles in the JBoss open-source application server and
boosts performance and scalability.
Set to debut at the vendor's Integration World show in San
Francisco, webMethods 6.0 also unifies the company's splintered
product set by incorporating enterprise application integration
(EAI) technologies from Active Software, which webMethods acquired
in July last year.
The unified platform will reduce the number of tools and adapter
sets, boost performance and provide a more "elegant" solution
overall, said Jim Green, chief technical officer at
webMethods.
More significantly, webMethods' bundling of J2EE-compliant JBoss is
meant to bolster its notion that the integration platform should
serve as the core element of the infrastructure, feeding all other
layers in the enterprise stack.
This puts it in stark contrast with application server giants such
as BEA, who are looking to grab market share in the EAI space by
building integration capabilities on top of their largely
commoditised offerings.
"We don't want to be in the app server business, but we do think
that if you automate across the enterprise and make things
network-aware, then there are various steps in the process that
represent significant business logic that you'll need to host as
well," Green said. "We say build the app server on top of the
integration system, since we span all systems in the
enterprise."
To make this work, however, webMethods needed a way to host
application source code to blend together with its own integration
logic, something that "BEA did not want to help us with," Green
said.
JBoss technology, available free of charge and widely used in some
large enterprises, will enable Java-developed business logic -
typically the domain of an application server - to be accessed and
manipulated from inside the integration platform. JBoss hosts
Enterprise Java Bean containers.
Green contends that combination will help lower licensing costs, by
not requiring enterprises to buy a separate app server for their
development needs. It should also serve to streamline business
processes and reduce management overhead through the use of a
single console to keep tabs on the unified platform.
"The bottom line is that in the past, to write an app and integrate
it with legacy systems you had to buy both [an application server
and integration server]. Now you don't," Green said.