Systinet Simplifies SOA with Governance Interoperability Framework; Multi-Vendor Framework Provides First Governance Solution Spanning SOA Security, Management, Enterprise Information Integration, Composite Applications, and Registry.

BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Systinet, the leading software provider of the foundation for SOA governance and lifecycle management, today announced it has wide industry support from leading Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) providers for a groundbreaking initiative in SOA governance called the Governance Interoperability Framework (GIF). The Framework makes SOA simpler to manage, control and scale while also greatly improving the visibility and quality of SOA information.

The Framework, supported by Systinet's Business Services Registry acting as the system-of-record, is the first and only collaborative, standards-based approach to controlling an SOA across multiple vendors and technologies. The GIF also marks a significant milestone for the industry, as it brings together SOA management, security, integration, enterprise information integration, composite applications and business intelligence vendors for the first time. GIF participants include - Above All Software, Actional, AmberPoint, Composite Software, DataPower, HP, Layer 7 Technologies, MetaMatrix, Reactivity, and Service Integrity.

"SOA Governance must address all domains of SOA - security, management, registry, development, orchestration/composite services and enablement/integration," said Daryl Plummer, group vice president and research general manager at Gartner, Inc. "Companies won't be able to find a single solution or technology to meet the requirements for SOA Governance, and instead will have to bring together a framework built from multiple vendors, with registry acting as the foundation that could unify it all."

GIF participants benefit by having the ability to publish services and associated policy to a system of reference, the Business Services Registry (BSR), in a standardized way, and to be alerted to changes within the BSR when they happen. Essentially, the GIF fosters the creation of a complete solution for SOA governance and control.

Supporting Partner Quotes:

Above All Software (www.aboveallsoftware.com)

"Our customers are realizing the business value of a service-oriented architecture through the deployment of composite applications," said Jon Temple, President and CEO of Above All Software. "Our integration with GIF will enable them to benefit from simplified governance and management which will help accelerate the pace of SOA adoption."

Actional Corp. (www.actional.com)

"To be successful, by its very nature an SOA must be an open and heterogeneous environment, avoiding the proprietary vendor lock-in that all-in-one solutions entail. Systinet, with their Governance Interoperability Framework, clearly recognize this reality. Through the out-of-the-box integration enabled by the GIF, customers that choose to deploy Actional's SOA Command and Control together with Systinet's Business Service Registry have the foundation for an enterprise-class SOA that delivers compelling business value throughout the application lifecycle with proven governance, security, and management solutions for the overall SOA," said Dan Foody, CTO, Actional Corp.

AmberPoint (www.amberpoint.com)

"Systinet's Governance Interoperability Framework will help organizations quickly gain greater business value from their SOA systems," said John Hubinger, CEO of AmberPoint, the industry's leading provider of SOA management software. "By providing a standards-based approach to publishing and discovering service information, it enables organizations to better leverage the best SOA technologies available to them. For example, with this ground-breaking framework, AmberPoint's runtime governance information can be shared by other solutions in the environment."

Composite Software (www.compositesw.com)

"We are pleased to support Systinet's Governance Interoperability Framework," said Wister Walcott, VP Marketing & Products at Composite, the Enterprise Information Integration (EII) leader and winner of Network Computing Editor's Choice award. "GIF support will leverage the significant Web Services and EII capabilities Composite provides today, accelerating SOA deployments and customers' ability to access all their data where it resides."

DataPower (www.datapower.com)

"DataPower's application-oriented networking vision relies on open standards and multi-vendor cooperation. This initiative, spearheaded by Systinet, is an important example of both," said Madhavan Vasudevan, Senior Director of Business Development at DataPower. "It will help enable end-to-end web services management and governance across a heterogeneous SOA infrastructure."

Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com)

"As a thought leader in web services since their inception in 1999, HP has always espoused the need for tight governance of loosely coupled services, as a key contributor of such standards as Web Service Distributed Management, UDDI, Business Process Execution Language and WS," said Yale Tankus, vice president partner & alliances, HP. "These standards are well incorporated into the various products, services and best practices that HP markets and supports."

Layer 7 Technologies (www.layer7-tech.com)

"Policy Governance will play an increasingly critical role for future SOA initiatives. As the number of services proliferate inside the enterprise, implementing consistent and compliant policy across loosely-coupled, sometimes federated services will demand new thinking around how policy is defined, lifecycled, provisioned, coordinated and verified," said Dimitri Sirota, VP Products and Alliances at Layer 7 Technologies. "Layer 7 Technologies believes the Governance Interop Framework will help organizations truly build, manage and operate effective end-to-end SOA Governance Frameworks."

MetaMatrix (www.metamatrix.com)

"The complexity of integrating commercial software products to achieve a functional web service based SOA is a major inhibitor to the broad adoption of this architecture," said Michael Lang, Sr. VP/Co-Founder, MetaMatrix. "We have tightly integrated our web services offering with the Systinet Registry to make the production and discovery of data services simple."

Reactivity (www.reactivity.com)

"The widespread adoption of XML Web services has created a clear need to coordinate governance across the heterogeneous infrastructures, products and platforms supporting XML Web services," said Andrew Nash, CTO Reactivity. "Reactivity is pleased to lend its support to GIF, which promises to provide customers with an open, standards-based mechanism for governing all XML Web services and SOA operations."

Service Integrity (www.serviceintegrity.com)

"As our customers have adopted SOA on a wide scale to become more agile, governance has become an increasing priority," said Michael Madden, President and CEO of Service Integrity. "The Governance Interoperability Framework is an important industry initiative that we're pleased to be a part of. Our product's real-time visibility enables run-time governance of SOA by bridging the gap between desired services levels and reality."

All partners that participate in the program will support GIF by end of 2005, and several participants have already implemented GIF support. Under the initiative, participants will jointly develop a set of technologies and specifications providing integration at the data, control and UI level between partner products. Members have also agreed to public participation in the GIF and to participate in a technical advisory group for shared learning and continued development.

"The Governance Interoperability Framework provides for the first time a systematic approach to SOA governance," said Systinet CEO Tom Erickson. "It makes it much easier for enterprises to adopt SOA with confidence, while greatly simplifying the integration of the different components necessary for SOA. We're excited to be leading such a unique program that brings together for the first time these top-tier companies to address the demand for interoperability."

Systinet believes that interoperability is the key to successful service oriented computing. Microsoft selected Systinet to demonstrate .NET and Java interoperability in a series of Webcasts, now available on the Microsoft interoperability Web site (www.systinet.com/resources/archived_webcasts). Systinet has continuously demonstrated the highest level of interoperability at a variety of Web services interoperability events. Systinet is an active member of the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) organization, and was the first company to provide a commercial product that fully supported the WS-I Basic Profile. Additionally, Systinet is participating, along with Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Sun, among others, at the WS-Security Interoperability Event sponsored by OASIS and held at the Gartner Application Integration and Web Services Forum, April 17-20, in Los Angeles.

About Systinet

Systinet is the leading software provider of the foundation for SOA governance and business service lifecycle management. Founded in 2000, Systinet's award-winning, proven, and standards-based products enable IT organizations to rapidly leverage existing technology investments, provide interoperability between heterogeneous systems, and better align business processes with IT. Customers receive the benefits of a simpler, faster, standards-based way to dramatically improve IT responsiveness and technology asset reuse, while maximizing the ROI for SOA. Systinet's customer base of over 150 Global 2000 clients includes Amazon.com, BMC Software, Interwoven, JP Morgan, Motorola, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and SAIC. Headquartered in Burlington, Mass., Systinet is a privately held company with over 100 employees. www.systinet.com