AmberPoint Announces New Release of SOA Management Software with Significant New Capabilities and Broader Reach.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- New Version of SOA Management System Offers Enhanced Policy Enforcement, Greater Visibility, Service Scorecard and Greater Support for SOA Infrastructure

AmberPoint, the leading provider of service-oriented architecture (SOA) management software, today announced significant enhancements to its SOA Management System. With its latest release, AmberPoint has extended both the breadth and depth of its management capabilities through expansive integration with security solutions and additional platform support. The new version of AmberPoint also introduces two industry firsts: a Service Scorecard and "first-mile" visibility and policy enforcement.

"SOA is all about reach," said Mike Thompson, principal research analyst of leading analyst firm, Butler Group. "Organizations implementing SOA must be able to oversee and control any variety of application components that are loosely coupled across a broad spectrum of infrastructure. The breadth of AmberPoint's support is crucial to successful monitoring and management of distributed services-based systems."

The Butler Group rated AmberPoint's SOA Management System highly in a recent, uncommissioned technology audit (see "Leading Analyst Firm Rates AmberPoint System a 'Strong and Flexible Solution'").

First-Mile Policy Enforcement and Visibility

With the new release of its management product, AmberPoint introduces an agent that automatically enforces policies on the client side. For example, if a service requires encryption, the client-side agent will encrypt messages before sending them. This saves developers from the responsibility of implementing management logic on clients.

The new version of AmberPoint dynamically adapts to system changes. If a policy is updated on the service, the new policy is automatically downloaded to and enforced at the client. The system is able to resolve changes to endpoints as well. The client-side agent automatically finds the latest service endpoints in the registry and dynamically routes messages to that up-to-date endpoint.

The client-side agent also allows organizations to monitor system health and performance from the perspective of the client, enabling Operations staff to better understand such issues as network lag.

--Reduced costs as a result of saving developers from the task of implementing management logic to clients

--Greater system agility from insulating clients from changes to management and security policies, precluding the coding and recoding of clients

--Deeper understanding of system performance from the perspective of service consumers

"AmberPoint continues to enhance its products to meet emerging market needs," said Jorge Mercado, lead architect of the Software Architecture Group at MedicAlert Foundation. "We've benefited from the regular enhancements to the AmberPoint product set. As we continue to build out our SOA and extend services to partners and customers, we'll benefit from the new security integrations AmberPoint has brought to its software."

Industry's First Service Scorecard

Through enhanced integration, AmberPoint publishes Service Scorecards to SOA registries. An industry first, these scorecards display vital data such as throughput, availability, response times, faults, service level agreement violations and exceptions across a choice of intervals (last day, last week, last month, etc.). This enables developers to choose services based on their behavior and helps architects to understand service characteristics relative to the intended performance of the system. AmberPoint also publishes service-to-consumer dependencies to the registry, facilitating impact analysis based on actual runtime usage.

--Ensures closed-loop governance of SOA systems

--More efficient selection of services published to registries

Expansive Integration with Security Products

AmberPoint now integrates with a wider variety of security infrastructure including CA eTrust SiteMinder, Tivoli Access Manager, Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP v3 directories such as Sun One LDAP Server.

--Comprehensive, integrated end-point security

--Enables organizations to extend existing security investments to new SOA initiatives

AmberPoint's new features and capabilities apply across all major platforms for Web service deployment, including the latest editions of IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and Microsoft IIS. AmberPoint's industry-leading platform support ensures comprehensive management and visibility across distributed, heterogeneous services networks.

"We continue to deliver solutions that anticipate the evolving needs of our growing roster of customers," said John Hubinger, AmberPoint CEO. "Our new first-mile policy enforcement is a great example of this. By enabling our customers to monitor their services-based systems from the vantage point of the client, we give them a much keener sense of how applications are used and where to make improvements."

About AmberPoint

AmberPoint is the industry's leading provider of SOA visibility, management and security solutions. Customers such as British Telecommunications, H&R Block, Motorola and the U.S. Department of Defense have chosen AmberPoint for its comprehensive capabilities, its non-invasive approach and its native support for Java and .NET. For more information, contact AmberPoint at 510.663.6300 or [e-mail], or visit www.amberpoint.com for a complimentary developer's edition of AmberPoint software.