Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Solution Assessments

Download Coverage Description (PDF)

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become the leading industry paradigm for software development. SOA-enabled software is inherently modular and reusable, with some profoundly beneficial qualities including: flexibility, agility and, above all, cost efficiency. To truly realize these benefits, however, companies must first implement the software infrastructure designed to enable and support SOA-based development.

This infrastructure solution, called a “SOA Platform”, consists of design, development, runtime, and management tools that are closely intertwined. Together, these SOA tools help customers move away from monolithic, legacy software and instead create discrete software services that can be assembled into larger applications. Because these software services are developed using strict interface standards, developers can quickly find pre-built components to suit specific business requirements, and combine them to form cross-platform applications capable of interacting with other SOA-enabled software.

Stay Informed with Analysis of Major Industry Issues

• Mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, and licensing arrangements among SOA vendors aimed at assembling comprehensive SOA product suites.
• Evolution of SOA solutions to support data management and business process management and to more fully encompass design-time and runtime governance capabilities.
• Delivery of SOA suite functionality as both licensed software and ondemand services via software as a service and infrastructure as a service.
• Support for flexible SOA B2B and A2A integration patterns required by global enterprises, including pre-packaged business processes and supporting material within vertical industries.
• Evolution of SOA software appliances tied closely to highly virtualized environments as a solution for presently inflexible hardware provisioning and utilization capabilities.
• Role of professional services in designing, building and maintaining SOA solutions within diverse horizontal and vertical market segments.

SOA Suite solutions are rated on the following selection criteria:

• Ability to offer supportive tools that assist in the installation and runtime management of the entire SOA environment, spanning operating system and application server monitoring to process-level governance.
• Ability to provide a series of product packaging, professional services and support options designed to target specific use cases, vertical markets andcompany sizes.
• Ability to comply with currently ratified WS-* standards, support a wide array of line-of-business applications (either directly or through adapters), function within both Java and .NET architectures.
• Ability to reach an international market and offer on-site professional services and support. Solutions must also directly target specific vertical markets, company sizes and horizontal use cases through a combination of training, information, best practices, pre-built packages and verticalized products.
• Ability to offer a wide array of closely integrated SOA infrastructure products including an ESB (or ESB functionality), registry/repository, application servers, application tooling, administration monitoring, business process lifecycle tools and portals.

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Market Segments Covered

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Anatomy of a Solution Assessment

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SOA Suite Solution Advisor Reports

Click here to view SOA Suite rankings

Current Analysis Solution Advisor reports for individual SOA Suite solutions are available for purchase and download online. These reports contain the analysis of the solution's strengths and weaknesses, and the evaulation on on how well the solution meets key customer selection criteria. Click here to view available reports, and more information.

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