The partnership, announced Monday, calls for the integration of Waltham, Mass.-based Iona's Artix enterprise service bus with AmberPoint's SOA Management System. Users will be able to easily pass data collected by Artix to AmberPoint's management console, according to officials from both companies.

They then can use the AmberPoint console to monitor the status of their Artix endpoints and services running there, said Ed Horst, vice president of marketing at Oakland, Calif.-based AmberPoint.

"If you look at a business process that is being managed by Artix, the initial step might start somewhere in the SOA environment and go through a series of steps inside of Artix and along the way use other external services," Horst said.

"We now have visibility to all the steps at a very fine-grained level. " In addition, the integrated tools will give users comprehensive, policy-based control over areas such as service-level management, exception management and security in the distributed SOA environment, Horst added .

"When people are analyzing their service-level agreements, we can help them pinpoint which individual step is the one that is causing a problem," he sai d. The deal marks the first time AmberPoint has integrated its SOA management software with an enterprise service bus, he added.