Software AG Announces webMethods 8.0, With Integrated Business Service Repository; Links SOA with Process Improvement
Software AG, a provider of business infrastructure software, has announced the latest release of its flagship webMethods platform, webMethods 8.0. The release enhances the ability of companies to capitalize on both open architecture and existing infrastructure investments, reduces the time and cost to improve processes and integrate systems, and enables dramatic end-user productivity through tighter collaboration between IT and the business.
With webMethods 8.0, Software AG continues to address the mission-critical business infrastructure software requirements of global enterprises with an emphasis on bringing together systems and partners and automating and improving processes that deliver faster time to value. Enterprises with large-scale projects can reduce time and cost by 25 percent or more, experiencing millions of dollars in savings. And, today’s CEO is looking across all areas of the company to reduce cost, increase productivity and align IT with the business.
“In an increasingly competitive global environment, it is important that companies tie IT investments to business improvement, and get results quickly,” said Dr. Peter Kuerpick, Chief Product Officer and Member of the Executive Board, Software AG. “webMethods 8.0 enables companies to accelerate their process improvement and SOA initiatives through improved reuse, streamlined development, and tight alignment of business and IT services. As a direct result, organizations can go “live” much faster and more cost-effectively, and business users can more easily drive continuous innovation and improvement.”
The latest release includes CentraSite ActiveSOA, what the vendor calls the world’s first integrated Business Service Repository to uniquely tie business process management (BPM) to service-oriented architecture (SOA), providing inspiration, reuse and change management to both the business and IT teams.
The releasee also includes enhanced Business Process Management, with a new paradigm in end-user productivity through collaborative personal workspaces, as well as webMethods Mediator, a new service mediation solution.
With the tight integration of CentraSite ActiveSOA, Software AG offers the industry’s first unified repository for business and technical services. Until now, organizations have been forced to maintain SOA assets in one registry and keep business process assets in a separate silo, thus forcing a disconnect between SOA and Process Improvement initiatives. webMethods 8.0, in conjunction with CentraSite ActiveSOA, puts all assets—including web services, integration-related services, and business process models, KPI’s and more—in a single unified repository. This union of process and SOA governance provides visibility for IT and business users to collaborate, linking SOA assets directly to business initiatives – a major leap forward in the SOA and BPM markets.
According to Gartner, Inc., a leading industry analyst firm, “Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) enable each other, but process governance must be coordinated with SOA governance to provide visibility and policy enforcement across multiple siloed domains.”1 webMethods 8.0 focuses on sharing actionable assets across IT and business for just these types of benefits.
webMethods 8.0 also provides new and expanded development and business process management capabilities. Specifically, the development interfaces have been consolidated into a single streamlined tool for configuration across the entire webMethods suite, greatly reducing the effort needed to go live with Integration, B2B, SOA and BPM. Software AG estimates that companies can reduce by 25 percent or more the time and cost to improve processes, deploy new services and applications, and integrate systems.
Additionally, webMethods 8.0 introduces webMethods Mediator. As services multiply and evolve, the most challenging aspect is managing change without disrupting the ongoing use of services by the business. Built on the webMethods ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) as a successor to webMethods X-Broker, Mediator simplifies managing the evolving relationship between service consumers and providers. With centralized, run-time management of heterogeneous SOA implementations, Mediator makes it easy to adapt your services for greater reuse.
webMethods 8.0 will launch as First Customer Ship on June 29. General availability is slated for December.
