SOA Software Announces Expanded SOA Governance for Microsoft .NET Framework

Market Wire, October, 2008

SOA Software , a leading Integrated SOA Governance Automation vendor, today announced that it has expanded certification of the Microsoft .NET Framework to include the Microsoft Managed Services Engine (MSE) as a Governed Service Platform. Building on previous certifications of Microsoft BizTalk Server and the .NET Framework, this expansion allows customers to confidently use MSE as part of a heterogeneous enterprise SOA environment sharing services with other commercial SOA platforms like SAP NetWeaver, IBM WebSphere, BEA, and Oracle, as well as RedHat and other open source providers.

Certified Governed Service Platform status means that customers can be confident that their platforms will not compromise the fidelity of the governance systems and structures defined in an enterprise SOA program. The certification process ensures that Governed Service Platforms can implement and enforce governance policies providing reporting data to enable a closed-loop audit process.

SOA Software has provided custom Windows Communication Foundation bindings and an extensible channel stack to provide additional governance capabilities to enterprises using the MSE for service virtualization. Security administrators can centrally define policies for services through SOA Software's Policy Manager™ leveraging automated governance approval processes. Once approved, the MSE can dynamically leverage the policy exposed via WS-MetadataExchange to ensure consistent policy enforcement at multiple levels of granularity.

SOA Software provides channels for audit, monitoring, SLA, faults/events, dynamic routing, message recording, and security including Kerberos, mutual auth SSL, username token, authorization (XACML), trust (SAML) and basic auth (LDAP). More channels are on their way; in some cases built by customers and partners using SOA Software's published APIs.

"The certification of Governed Service Platforms advances the discipline of Integrated SOA Governance Automation," said Frank Martinez, executive vice president of SOA Software. "Microsoft is deploying the MSE to provide customers with advanced service virtualization capabilities and along with SOA Software's membership in the Business Process Alliance (BPA), this certification gives them the confidence that SOA Software's products will preserve the fidelity of the governance models, structures and mechanisms supporting their enterprise SOA program."

Customers will add SOA Software's Integrated SOA Governance Automation solution to the .NET Framework and MSE in order to:

--  Enable and coordinate enterprise-level Service Lifecycle management
    across the virtual services through automation and workflow tailored to fit
    an organization's roles and policies.

--  Leverage SOA software's end-to-end policy support between clients and
    services to streamline the effort necessary to enable enterprise governance
    models.

--  Make services they expose from applications running on .NET Framework
    visible to and compliant with enterprise policies defined, enforced and
    audited across other platforms; and make services they design and build
    using other platforms like SAP and open source environments visible to and
    compliant with enterprise policies defined, enforced and audited across
    their .NET Framework applications.

--  Promote, ensure and formalize consistent alignment between demand from
    service consumers and the supply of services through Consumer Contract
    Provisioning.

--  Leverage the strengths of Microsoft's service enablement and
    adaptation capabilities with SOA Software's closed loop governance model.
    

SOA Software's platform-independent Integrated SOA Governance Automation solution promotes the use of best-practices throughout an enterprise SOA program regardless of where services and consumers are designed, built, deployed and operated. SOA Software's Solutions offer deep integration with the Microsoft SOA and Business Process solutions including: .NET Framework, BizTalk Server, Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server.

"SOA Software aligns well with our strategy to help customers enable a high level of agility with a rich governance model through dynamic behaviors and centralized configuration," said Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft Corp. "Its Policy Manager provides robust service lifecycle and policy management capabilities that allow our customers to help maximize the security and performance of their virtual services."

SOA Software and Microsoft

Our continued membership in the Microsoft BPA, provides an ongoing program for Microsoft and SOA Software to work together on a wide range of SOA initiatives to ensure their joint solutions meet the SOA and Business Process Management needs of enterprise customers.

Microsoft customers take advantage of SOA Software for seamless, heterogeneous SOA Governance, Security and Management integration with their Microsoft applications to ensure interoperability across disparate partners and platforms.