IBM Global Services on Tuesday is unveiling services for the planning, design, implementation, and management of SOAs (service-oriented architectures).
The "asset-based services" feature IBM software code, intellectual property, and best practices. IBM defines an SOA as an architecture enabling extraction of capabilities from underlying applications for use in a loosely coupled application infrastructure.
IBM"s SOA services are priced depending on the scope of a project. Prices could run from $100,000 to $100 million. "There"s a broad scope here," said Michael Liebow, vice president of SOA and Web services at IBM Global Services.
New offerings include:
-- Business Enablement Services for Service-Oriented Architecture, to identify how an SOA can meet a customer"s business goals. The service seeks to align business and IT and seeks to avoid missteps by assuring that technologies implemented will meet needs,
-- Design Services for Service-Oriented Architecture, to develop a plan and architectural design for an SOA,
-- Implementation Services for Service-Oriented Architecture, for deploying targeted aspects of an SOA, and
-- Management Services for Service-Oriented Architecture, to provide ongoing performance monitoring, maintenance, and requirements verification.
Additionally, the four services integrate with a customer"s underlying application portfolio through a new service called Application Value Optimization Services (AVO), which provides an end-to-end integration solution to assess, transform, and manage applications on a continual basis.
AVO assists users with renovating underlying applications to leverage them in an SOA, Liebow said.
IBM said its new services are based on industry-specific platforms to enable the quickest possible deployment of new technology. An industry-specific approach defines common design and implementation techniques and can be applied to vertical applications such as banking, IBM said.
"To really appreciate an SOA framework, it has to be modeled after any given industry," Liebow said.