Software AG outlines plans for webMethods products
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InfoWorld - Software AG will adopt the webMethods name for its Crossvision range of SOA (services oriented architecture) products, executives said Friday, outlining how they will integrate staff and products following the company&#39;s&#160;acquisition of webMethods.
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Next month, firm will launch revamped middleware products for content management and application infrastructure.
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(InfoWorld) - As part of a new market strategy aimed at growth markets, business software vendor Software AG will focus on SOA (service-oriented architecture) products and services, and plans acquisitions to broaden its product portfolio and market share, company executives announced at a news conference Wednesday. The Darmstadt, Germany, software maker, whichÂ used to tag itself The XML Company, sees its future in helping businesses migrate their legacy IT systems to more flexible, SOA-enabled infrastructures, said Peter KÃ¼rpick, the member of the Software AG executive board responsible for research and development, Software AG offers a suite of products, including its main Crossvision application, that provide companies with the necessary tools to build SOA-based services and the interfaces to link them to other applications, KÃ¼rpick said. KÃ¼rpick pointed to the company's new Active Governance Framework (AGF) featuring an SOA policy editor that allows developers to edit and enforce business and technical policies. One of AGF's features is the capability to send alerts to business users when an application conflicts with an established policy. With its focus on SOA products and services, Software AG aims to double its sales to â¬1 billion ($1.3 billion) within the next five years, said CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich. While Software AG intends to "remain a product company," a huge share of its business will come from consulting services, said company spokesman Norbert Eder. Acquisitions, particularly a larger company in the U.S., will help increase sales and thus market share, according to Eder. Software AG is also keen to acquire smaller software companies that can broaden its SOA portfolio or provide access to new markets in Europe, he said. The company has set aside â¬700 million for acquisitions. At the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, next month, Software AG plans to provide more details about its SOA strategy, KÃ¼rpick said. The company is the initiator of the "SOA World" event to held at the trade show. The event will include a forum and exhibition by providers of SOA products and services.
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SAP AG announced two updates to the Master Data Management (MDM) component of its NetWeaver integration and application platform on Tuesday. The updates, which will appear by the end of the year, are designed to make it easier to synchronize data between different systems. Two other new NetWeaver enhancements, faster searching of corporate data and more robust handling of errors in Java applications, will only appear in the next release of NetWeaver, planned for 2005, the company said at the SAP TechEd conference in San Diego.
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Software maker considering online and perhaps ad-funded versions of the low-end productivity software.
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GT Software next week will formally unveil its platform for outfitting mainframe applications with Web services functionality and linking legacy data into SOAs (service-oriented architectures).
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BEA Systems is set to release a new all-in-one package on Monday to help software partners create and install Web applications more quickly.
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The tools, part of an upcoming Visual Studio update, are focused on making it easier to create customized Web applications.
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(InfoWorld) - Software AG on Thursday plans to announce its Active Governance Framework (AGF), which features a policy editor for SOA. With AGF, developers can edit and enforce business and technical policies. Alerts are sent to business users when an application conflicts with an established policy. The policy editor plugs into the CentraSite SOA registry and repository, which keeps track of SOA artifacts, including Web services. CentraSite was developed by both Software AG and Fujitsu. "What's great about the pluggable architecture is that first of all, we can very, very quickly enhance the product without going through major release cycles," said Matt Durham, vice president of market development at Software AG. Through the policy editor, developers can take ad hoc or proprietary policies, such as policy written in a Word document, and copy and enforce them. An example of a business policy that could be enforced would be a policy on who is allowed to fly at a certain class. A technical policy could involve, for example, making one service usage contingent on another service. Wiki-based collaboration capabilities are featured in AGF. Also part of AGF is the ability to synchronize with policies managed within third-party tools such as a tool for security. Advanced federation in AGF allow for cross-registry communication and is based on the UDDI standard. The AGF plugin is slated to be available in the second quarter of this year. CentraSite is part of the Software AG crossvision SOA suite, but users do not need to purchase the whole suite.
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(InfoWorld) - Software AG will adopt the webMethods name for its Crossvision range of SOA (services oriented architecture) products, executives said Friday, outlining how they will integrate staff and products following the company'sÂ acquisition of webMethods. To eliminate one of the few overlaps in their product lines, Software AG will adopt webMethods' BPM (business process management) offering, and stop selling Fujitsu's Interstage BPM software, which it has distributed since December 2004. However, Software AG will support its existing Interstage customers for at least five years, said Peter KÃ¼rpick, board member responsible for research and development. Another area of overlap is in SOA management and governance, where KÃ¼rpick expects to see Software AG's CentraSite SOA registry and repository combined with webMethods' recently acquired Infravio SOA governance tools by the end of the year. "We are strong in managing metadata, and they are strong in governance policies, rules and regulations," he said. The combined product will likely retain the CentraSite name, he said. All other areas of the companies' product lines are complementary, and there will be no need for customers to migrate, KÃ¼rpick said. KÃ¼rpick will lead the integration of the companies' product development teams, where he expects managers from both companies will take senior roles. It won't be like a classic merger where "you own the body but the head and legs are gone," he said. He sees little need for layoffs as the product development teams are combined: "We already have an R&D force that is 50 percent low-cost, mostly in India, some in Bulgaria, so we already have a good cost structure," he said. Although there may be little scope for payroll savings, CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich expects earnings to improve this year as the two sales forces -- which will remain separate at least through the end of 2007 -- exploit opportunities to cross-sell the two product ranges. The combined entity's revenue will grow organically by 10 percent over the next 12 to 15 months, he said.
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The hosted CRM company's upcoming release will include a new framework for customizing online business software.
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Company aims to ease server management headaches with PHP tool set. Also on tap: updated tools for Web developers.
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TechWeb - The company expects to fill what it sees as a market void -- Web-based software that's affordable to small businesses with up to 50 employees.
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Business integration suite vendor WebMethods is on the acquisition trail again, this time looking to pick up expertise in SOA (service-oriented architecture) governance through the planned purchase of Infravio.
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Software giant says the final version will be available next year.
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SAP AG  unveiled a  long-awaited line of Web-delivered software on Wednesday that  will radically change the company's business model and may  shake up the Internet software arena.
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InfoWorld - IBM this month plans to release an upgrade to its Rational Software Architect design and development tool that integrates with the IBM WebSphere Business Integration Modeler tool. The integration between the two offerings is intended to enable IT architects to take business models from the WebSphere tool and convert those to solutions via the UML-based Rational product, according to IBM officials. "They'll get a fairly good understanding of what the business process is that they&#8217;re supposed to implement," said Alan Brown, IBM Distinguished Engineer.