CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 13, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- NetManage, Inc. (Nasdaq:NETM), a software company that provides solutions for integrating, Web enabling and accessing enterprise information systems, today announced a server product designed to provide organizations with a blueprint and starting point for SOA deployments, the NetManage SOA Planner. The product, which captures business critical user data needed to make quantifiable SOA planning decisions, is the foundation of the company's new Incremental SOA(tm) strategy, a flexible four-step process designed to help organizations take a phased, lower-risk approach to creating a SOA.
The NetManage SOA Planner is a server product installed on a network that non-invasively listens to host system interactions in real-time to capture common usage patterns. End-user processes are tracked without impact to operations, providing critical insight to plan a practical SOA deployment. As a result, the captured data can be mined by system architects and developers to make smarter decisions about which services are essential when planning and deploying an SOA.
"Enterprises planning an SOA initiative require an effective tool to help them non-invasively analyze service usage patterns in order to maximize the value of their SOA deployment," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink. "NetManage's new SOA Planner provides a blueprint based on tangible evidence for what an organization's SOA strategy should look like to help system architects and developers plan their deployments."
NetManage's "Incremental SOA" strategy for host application integration is based on the company's experience from more than 15 years of successfully integrating, Web enabling and accessing data locked within large enterprise computing systems at Global 1000 firms. Made up of the company's SOA Planner, OnWeb(r) and OnWeb for CICS technologies, organizations that follow this phased, "low-risk" approach to creating an SOA will find that they not only meet ROI and deployment goals, but they overcome developer adoption challenges, a key reason many implementations have failed to date.
Incremental SOA: Four Steps
Fortunately, the nature of SOA lends itself to -- and demands -- incremental adoption. NetManage's "Incremental SOA" strategy follows a four-step process; plan, build, evolve and scale to create an SOA. Each phase of the process is independent, so companies can optimize their SOA deployment according to their needs while leveraging previous investments. Enterprises that take this iterative and interactive approach begin to see pay-off more quickly, often recovering their costs in as little as 12 to 18 months.
Step-1: Plan
One of the biggest hurdles in starting practical SOA projects is understanding exactly what transactions need to be service-enabled. This can be an extremely time consuming and costly process that may not result in the cost savings that most organizations estimate they will receive. NetManage has found that successful implementations start as project-based roll-outs that are thoroughly planned and non-invasively use the end user's day to day work to identify what transactions should be targeted for service enablement. Not only does the planning step help identify where an organization should start, but this step brings IT professionals into the planning process, a key step toward overcoming developer adoption challenges commonly found in many organizations. NetManage's SOA Planner provides user organizations with a blueprint to identify what steps to take and when.
Step-2: Build
Once a company has identified the business processes that can benefit most from a Service-oriented approach using the SOA Planner, systems architects and developers can publish these processes to OnWeb, which will automatically convert them into a prototype Web service. Small project deployments using prototyped services are critical because they can quickly be tested with developers and users for feedback. Involving these professionals early in the process ensures "buy-in" to the architecture's value as well as service adoption in new application development, which will help the development team meet objectives faster, saving time and money. Once a service has been deployed as a prototype, the developer can easily modify that service using additional capabilities of OnWeb leading to Step 3 in the Incremental SOA strategy.
Step-3: Evolve
Developers resist using shared Web services due to their perception these services do not satisfy their requirements. Companies who use OnWeb to develop and deploy prototype SOA projects can easily modify the services using point-and-click tools. This is an interactive and iterative process, with participation from developers and users, eliminating cultural challenges of shared Web services adoption.
Step-4: Scale
Once the departments begin seeing tangible results from the prototype projects, system architects and developers have the option of scaling to organization-wide high performance deployments. By doing so, companies can migrate the services to run locally on mainframe or iSeries hardware, leveraging the power and performance of these systems and meeting SLA requirements. NetManage OnWeb for CICS and OnWeb iSeries can be deployed in a manner that makes it possible to support approved services in a "non-screen-scraping" environment, increasing the performance and stability of the services.
"Organizations that adopt an Incremental SOA strategy will increase the likelihood that their legacy application modernization projects will meet ROI goals and deployment objectives," said Peter Kastner, vice president and research director at Aberdeen Research. "NetManage's strategy not only addresses resistance that many developers have to using Web services to create new applications, but provides a series of steps, supported by the company's new SOA Planner and OnWeb products, which help organizations deploy this break-through architecture based on interoperability and reusability."
"Our customers in the financial, healthcare and insurance industries have demanded a way to incrementally SOA-enable their IT infrastructure in order to reduce costs while leveraging essential information stored on the host computers and mainframes systems," said Zvi Alon, chairman, founder and CEO of NetManage. "Based on close customer collaboration, NetManage has laid out a four step approach to be used linearly or each step individually depending on our customers' needs. Organizations following our Incremental SOA strategy, utilizing our new SOA Planner and our proven OnWeb products, will find that they will meet their ROI and development goals quicker than with competitive offerings or approaches."
Pricing and availability
NetManage SOA Planner will be available on December 4, 2006. For more information, please contact sales@netmanage.com
NetManage "Incremental SOA" Webinar
On Monday, November 13, NetManage's Director of Product Management, Archie Roboostoff, will host a free Webinar entitled, "Incremental SOA Revealed" at 11:00 a.m. ET/8:00 a.m. PT. Roboostoff will introduce a four-step incremental approach that will help organizations quickly create an SOA that will address the cultural and technical challenges that this breakthrough architecture brings. For more information, please visit www.netmanage.com.
About NetManage
NetManage, Inc. (Nasdaq:NETM) is a software company that provides solutions for integrating, Web enabling and accessing enterprise information systems. More than 10,000 customers worldwide, including the majority of the Fortune 500, have chosen NetManage for mission critical application integration. For more information, visit www.netmanage.com.
NetManage, the NetManage logo, the lizard-in-the-box logo, Chameleon and Chameleon design, RUMBA, ONESTEP, ViewNow, SupportNow, Librados, and OnWeb are either trademarks or registered trademarks of NetManage, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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