Remote Information Access

SOA Infrastructure Relies on Remote Information Access

Lately it seems that service-oriented architecture (SOA) -- especially Web services-based SOA -- is the talk of IT professionals, architects and application developers. IT professionals find it almost impossible to discuss corporate technology plans or strategies without discussing SOA. Why? Because many IT departments see SOA as a way to speed up the application development process and make their enterprise and application infrastructure more secure, agile and adaptable to changing business needs. A key part of the business requirement that SOA offers is remote information access - the ability to deliver desktop-like access to any user, at any location, with no extra configuration required. Progress Software is committed to delivering remote information access technology that guarantees that business-critical applications and services are available to everyone who needs them. And the backbone technology that brings applications, services and data together is the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), specifically the Progress® Sonic ESB®.

ESBs Deliver Remote Information Access to Everyone Who Demands It

For businesses that need a way to share critical information without compromising the security, privacy or autonomy of their independent operations, an enterprise service bus (ESB) brings a new order of interoperability and flexibility. ESB technology is also designed to help the enterprise save on hardware, software and maintenance costs while still supporting more concurrent users and providing secure remote information access to applications and resources. Sonic ESB is a messaging-based enterprise service bus that simplifies the enterprise integration and flexible re-use of business applications within an SOA. Sonic ESB eliminates unnecessary IT and user complexity because it is as simple to deploy as it is to use. Sonic ESB eliminates the rigidity and fragility of point-to-point integration with a robust, event-driven architecture that can evolve, scale and extend throughout the enterprise. Across security domains, firewalls and wide-area networks, Sonic ESB manages the distributed deployment and execution of independently scalable integration services.

Sonic ESB Delivers on the True Promise of SOA

Making remote information access work effectively requires an SOA infrastructure that relies on industry standards, and one that allows you to easily connect, mediate and control Web services. Today's smart businesses are adopting the Sonic ESB for their SOA because it delivers on the promise of SOA:

• Business agility – Almost all business managers contend that business agility is directly proportional to business profitability. SOA enhances business agility by speeding up the ability to respond with new and enhanced applications. And faster time-to-market for new business processes translates into major competitive advantage.
  
  
• Remote information access – Using industry standards and standard-based interfaces, SOA promises to simplify access to legacy systems. The ability to service-enable and integrate proprietary technologies with open standards helps to reduce the time and cost associated with deploying new or enhanced applications.
  
  
• Lower development costs – Application development is more economical with Web Services. With standardization and the ability to reuse code, developers have better access to proven software and can focus on their value-add rather than rewriting what has previously been solved. What's more, the proliferation of Web services tools by middleware vendors such as Progress Software greatly simplifies enterprise integration of published Web services.

Application Integration Patterns with SOA

The Sonic ESB Product Family comprises Sonic ESB and a comprehensive set of compatible products that simplify application integration within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It extends Sonic ESB—robust infrastructure software that integrates large, physically distributed deployments—with complex service orchestration, operational data management, and integration of third-party relational data sources, packaged applications and technologies. Some of these application integration patterns include:

• Continuous Pipeline Processing - When incompatible business applications are bridged by batch processing or manual intervention, business processes slow down. Migrating from batch to continuous processing will reduce cycle time, gain consistent, up-to-date visibility into in-process data, reduce the cost of processing peak transaction loads, and put in place a more flexible architecture to handle new business requirements.
  
  
• Remote Information Access - User-facing portals are an ideal way to share information collected from multiple applications. The challenge is doing that without compromising the security, privacy or autonomy of the participating applications. To do this effectively, you need a distributed enterprise service bus that can cross crosses departments, firewalls, security domains, and large geographies.
  
  
• Remote Data Distribution - Simplify reliable information distribution and enhance agility in a changing IT environment. Exploit support for notification style SOA using Sonic ESB.
  
  
• Respond to Real Time Business Events - Real-time business events can be easily distributed to additional systems on the ESB as the need arises. New systems can join the bus and instantly subscribe to events without disruption to existing services and scenarios already running on the bus. This allows new events to be quickly integrated across nodes in a global environment with zero administrative overhead.

In addition to solving the problem of remote information access, Progress also delivers SOA infrastructure technology and services for enterprise application integration, business process improvement, business activity monitoring (BAM), and semantic data integration.