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GT Software
the leading provider of rapid SOA development solutions that
leverage mainframe resources, today announced release 4.0 of
Ivory Service Architect, expanding Ivory’s legendary support
of composite business services to virtually every
application in a customer’s architecture.
The flagship product of GT Software, Ivory Service Architect
consists of Ivory Studio, a graphical modeling environment;
Ivory Server, a high-performance SOAP processor with runtime
service orchestration; and Ivory Server for Batch.
The new version expands the platforms, environments, and
formats supported by Ivory to include non-conventional
interfaces and applications, both on and off the mainframe.
Customers no longer have to limit their business services to
standard mainframe interfaces.
“As service oriented architecture becomes a more acceptable
mainframe modernization strategy, organizations need to
consider their long-term requirements,” said Dale Vecchio,
Gartner Research Vice President. “More complex SOA will
require full XML support as well as sophisticated
orchestration capabilities. Therefore we recommend
organizations understand their long-term SOA requirements
rather than just focusing on their initial needs and
consider tools that provide good breadth of coverage,
deployment options and strong performance.”
Systems and technologies such as MQ Series, CORBA, custom
applications – even encryption and compression routines –
can now be seamlessly included within an Ivory developed Web
service. More importantly, this “inclusionary” approach
ensures that virtually all functionality on the mainframe
can be leveraged in a composite service removing massive
barriers in the ability to design quality services.
“The broad reach of Ivory allows mainframe SOA initiatives
to revolve around business needs, rather than limitations of
legacy technologies,” said Steve Craggs, Lustratus Research
Group analyst. “Recognizing the importance of extending
legacy mainframe technologies to new infrastructure concepts
such as SOA and Web services, customers need tools that
encompass as much of their mainframe portfolio as possible.
This is the only way to ensure the consistent creation of
valuable, governable, reusable services. This new version of
Ivory Service Architect is designed precisely for that
purpose, and is a logical addition to GT Software’s
portfolio.”
In addition to broadening the platforms and environments
supported by Ivory, two other new features distinguish Ivory
Service Architect 4.0 from other approaches to building or
migrating to SOA systems:
• Ivory’s Source Control Management System allows a new,
higher level of team collaboration across Ivory projects,
bringing a team-based, enterprise development approach to
mainframe SOA;
• Ivory also strengthens the concept of Callable Services,
whereby anything developed in Ivory can be called by other
programs on the mainframe to in-turn, call Web services that
reside off the mainframe. Now any Ivory Web service can be
converted to a callable service, and vice-versa; this new
feature offers unparalleled productivity in changing how
Ivory services are invoked.
“Companies using Ivory 4.0 can now incorporate virtually any
functionality, even applications with variable length
interfaces, into their mainframe SOA initiatives,” said Rob
Morris, chief strategy officer at GT Software. “They no
longer have to exclude functionality that doesn't conform to
static, conventional interfaces like OTMA, Link3270, or CICS
LINK. Combined with efficiency improvements and source
control integration, Ivory 4.0 represents a major step in
confirming the maturation of mainframe SOA.”
Ivory Service Architect supports deployment of
mainframe-based Web services across the widest range of
platforms, giving organizations broad flexibility in where
they choose to house SOA-related workload. No other solution
on the market today offers such a variety of options for
mainframe SOA. Without requiring any changes to the service
definition, Ivory Service Architect supports the deployment
of mainframe-based Web services across z/VSE, z/OS, CICS/TS,
CICS, IMS, Windows, Wintel, UNIX, and Linux. Key benefits of
this broader platform support include the ability to shift
SOA-related workload off the mainframe, as well as the
ability to leverage new mainframe MIPS-reducing hardware
such as IFL processors with zLinux.
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