SMB - SOA vendors link up for interoperability

02.05.2006
A gaggle of vendors specializing in SOA (service-oriented architecture) said on Monday that they were joining forces to make it easier to get technology from different vendors to interoperate.

SOA Link is an "interoperability initiative" that was organized by SOA governance vendor Infravio Inc. The group counts companies such as AmberPoint, Forum Systems, JBoss, Layer 7 Technologies, NetIQ, and Reactivity as members.

SOA Link members say that they will work on creating a standard way for different SOA governance technologies, such as policy repositories, authoring systems, or run time enforcement systems, to interoperate, according to a statement from Infravio.

Service-oriented architecture is a kind of software application architecture that uses common description languages such as XML (Extensible Markup Language) to create interfaces for different business processes that can be accessed by client software running on any operating system.

Products from participating members will be able to publish services and issue policies in a standard way, allowing SOA Link partner products to keep abreast of changes in other products when they happen, Infravio said.

The goal is to create a system where customers can piece together an end-to-end solution for SOA governance using products from different vendors.