Sonic Business Integration Suite 5.0

Sonic Software Releases Sonic ESB 5.0

Newest Release of Industry's First Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Adds High Availability, Scalability and Security Capabilities, Award-winning Development Tools

Bedford, MA, USA. April 14, 2003.

Sonic Software today announced the availability of Sonic ESB 5.0 (formerly SonicXQ), the foundation of Sonic's enterprise integration product line: the Sonic Business Integration Suite. Sonic ESB provides a distributed, standards-based, cost-effective, easily managed infrastructure that reliably integrates applications and orchestrates business processes across the extended enterprise using Web services and the J2EE Connector Architecture. Sonic's standards-based approach to distributed integration is more flexible and cost-effective than integration brokers or application servers.

Leveraging the proven enterprise-grade communications and management infrastructure of SonicMQ(R), the industry's most scalable enterprise message server, Sonic ESB 5.0 includes new capabilities that streamline and simplify the configuration, deployment, instrumentation and management of distributed, standards-based integration projects. Sonic ESB 5.0 includes an enhanced management framework that allows companies to configure and monitor large integration networks from a single dashboard. This release also extends Sonic's leadership in scalability and availability for mission critical environments, and includes a pluggable security framework to ensure that the infrastructure honors existing corporate security policies. Sonic ESB 5.0 also includes Sonic Stylus Studio, the award-winning XML development environment that delivers new levels of developer productivity to integration projects.

The enterprise service bus category has taken shape very rapidly within the last twelve months. ESBs are built on five key principles:

Service-oriented architecture (SOA). ESBs implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA), supporting service-based interactions among cooperating applications based on XML messages and enhanced Web services standards. This allows interactions between departments, business units, or with business partners to be defined in coarse-grained business terms, rather than in complex and brittle application interfaces. As a result, ESBs can accommodate and absorb significant change in the implementation details of individual applications or services connected to the bus.
Enterprise-grade communications backbone. ESBs must provide an enterprise-grade communications backbone required to reliably connect applications across multiple geographic, administrative or security domains, based on the Java Message Server (JMS) standard.
Support for standards. By supporting standard methods and mechanisms to develop and interconnect applications across the enterprise, such as WSDL, SOAP, JMS and J2EE-CA, ESBs dramatically reduce the implementation time and total cost of ownership of integration projects.
Intelligent routing. ESBs automate business transaction routing based on XML document contents and business rules. This eliminates the need to hardcode this functionality into application code or establish rigid relationships between services.
Deployment flexibility and distributed management. ESBs provide the ability to centrally configure, deploy, and manage services that are distributed across the enterprise. Unlike centralized, monolithic application server or integration broker architectures, ESB's allow for optimal flexibility, and further allow services to be managed and scaled independently of each other for operational efficiency. Location transparency allows services to be upgraded, moved, or replaced without having to modify any application code.

"The ESB is an open standards-based technology concept that will revolutionize IT and enable flexible and scalable distributed computing for generations to come," said Sally Hudson, research manager of software infrastructure, IDC. "The ESB is emerging as the backbone of the distributed framework within enterprise IT, because it allows not only the retention and deployment of existing business critical applications, but also allows the user to introduce and remove newer applications as needed."

"The future of where command and control is going to go is towards the enterprise service bus concept. With Sonic, our next-generation Command and Control Interoperable, Collaborative Enterprise, or C2ICE platform, enables the networked integration and management of hundreds and even thousands of disparate data sources, including weather, intelligence, legacy databases and remote digital surveillance devices," said Jon Johnson, chief engineer for Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, Colorado Spring Engineering Organization, a leading provider of government and civil command, control and intelligence systems. "The Sonic ESB product will put us way ahead in that we no longer have to care about what kind of middleware is in Department of Defense and homeland security systems as they stand alone."

"ESBs enable incremental integration, allowing organizations to start with departmental integration projects, safe in the knowledge that they can readily extend the integration infrastructure as broadly as necessary," said Gordon Van Huizen, vice president of product management for Sonic Software. "As a result ESBs are cost-effective, yet provide organizations with the ability to scale to large numbers of applications and services across a distributed enterprise. Moreover, ESBs allow organizations to leverage the two most highly valued assets in the IT organization: the existing infrastructure and their IT staff."

Enhancements in Sonic ESB 5.0 include:

Enhanced Distributed Management Framework: A Java Management Extensions (JMX)-based management infrastructure makes configuration, deployment, monitoring and diagnosis of thousands of distributed services possible. All of these management functions can be performed from a unified management dashboard.
High Availability & Scalability: Sonic ESB provides transparent access to redundant communication servers to enable the high-availability required by mission critical deployments.
Pluggable Security: A pluggable security framework provides the ability to integrate across the multiple security domains that co-exist within an enterprise, or between business partners. This ensures that connected information and applications honor established security policies.
Integrated Development Tools: Sonic ESB is integrated with Sonic Stylus Studio, an award-winning XML development tool that includes a visual XSLT transformation mapper and debugger and an XQuery expression builder, as well as XML document and schema editors. With this new tool bundle, developer productivity increases to rapidly accelerate time-to-deployment for these projects.

Pricing and Availability

Sonic ESB will be available on April 28th at a price of $10,000 per server CPU.

About Sonic Software

Sonic Software provides the first comprehensive business integration suite built on an enterprise service bus (ESB). The Sonic product line delivers a distributed, standards-based, cost-effective, easily managed infrastructure that reliably integrates applications and orchestrates business processes across the extended enterprise. Sonic is the world's fastest growing integration and middleware company and counts global leaders among over 500 customers in financial services, energy, telecommunications and manufacturing. Sonic is an independent operating company of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a $300 million software industry leader. Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., Sonic Software can be reached on the Web at www.sonicsoftware.com, or by phone at +1-781-999-7000 or 1-866-GET-SONIC.

Contact

Sonic Software
Trip Kucera
Tel: +1 781/999-7142
Email: trip.kucera@sonicsoftware.com

[Source: http://www.sonicsoftware.com/sonic/news/pressrelease_108138/pritem.ssp]

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.

SEARCH Advanced Search ABOUT Site Map CP RSS Channel Contact Us Sponsoring CP About Our Sponsors NEWS Cover Stories Articles & Papers Press Releases CORE STANDARDS XML SGML Schemas XSL/XSLT/XPath XLink XML Query CSS SVG TECHNOLOGY REPORTS XML Applications General Apps Government Apps Academic Apps EVENTS LIBRARY Introductions FAQs Bibliography Technology and Society Semantics Tech Topics Software Related Standards Historic	Sonic Business Integration Suite 5.0 Sonic Software Releases Sonic ESB 5.0 Newest Release of Industry's First Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Adds High Availability, Scalability and Security Capabilities, Award-winning Development Tools Bedford, MA, USA. April 14, 2003. Sonic Software today announced the availability of Sonic ESB 5.0 (formerly SonicXQ), the foundation of Sonic's enterprise integration product line: the Sonic Business Integration Suite. Sonic ESB provides a distributed, standards-based, cost-effective, easily managed infrastructure that reliably integrates applications and orchestrates business processes across the extended enterprise using Web services and the J2EE Connector Architecture. Sonic's standards-based approach to distributed integration is more flexible and cost-effective than integration brokers or application servers. Leveraging the proven enterprise-grade communications and management infrastructure of SonicMQ(R), the industry's most scalable enterprise message server, Sonic ESB 5.0 includes new capabilities that streamline and simplify the configuration, deployment, instrumentation and management of distributed, standards-based integration projects. Sonic ESB 5.0 includes an enhanced management framework that allows companies to configure and monitor large integration networks from a single dashboard. This release also extends Sonic's leadership in scalability and availability for mission critical environments, and includes a pluggable security framework to ensure that the infrastructure honors existing corporate security policies. Sonic ESB 5.0 also includes Sonic Stylus Studio, the award-winning XML development environment that delivers new levels of developer productivity to integration projects. The enterprise service bus category has taken shape very rapidly within the last twelve months. ESBs are built on five key principles: Service-oriented architecture (SOA). ESBs implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA), supporting service-based interactions among cooperating applications based on XML messages and enhanced Web services standards. This allows interactions between departments, business units, or with business partners to be defined in coarse-grained business terms, rather than in complex and brittle application interfaces. As a result, ESBs can accommodate and absorb significant change in the implementation details of individual applications or services connected to the bus. Enterprise-grade communications backbone. ESBs must provide an enterprise-grade communications backbone required to reliably connect applications across multiple geographic, administrative or security domains, based on the Java Message Server (JMS) standard. Support for standards. By supporting standard methods and mechanisms to develop and interconnect applications across the enterprise, such as WSDL, SOAP, JMS and J2EE-CA, ESBs dramatically reduce the implementation time and total cost of ownership of integration projects. Intelligent routing. ESBs automate business transaction routing based on XML document contents and business rules. This eliminates the need to hardcode this functionality into application code or establish rigid relationships between services. Deployment flexibility and distributed management. ESBs provide the ability to centrally configure, deploy, and manage services that are distributed across the enterprise. Unlike centralized, monolithic application server or integration broker architectures, ESB's allow for optimal flexibility, and further allow services to be managed and scaled independently of each other for operational efficiency. Location transparency allows services to be upgraded, moved, or replaced without having to modify any application code. "The ESB is an open standards-based technology concept that will revolutionize IT and enable flexible and scalable distributed computing for generations to come," said Sally Hudson, research manager of software infrastructure, IDC. "The ESB is emerging as the backbone of the distributed framework within enterprise IT, because it allows not only the retention and deployment of existing business critical applications, but also allows the user to introduce and remove newer applications as needed." "The future of where command and control is going to go is towards the enterprise service bus concept. With Sonic, our next-generation Command and Control Interoperable, Collaborative Enterprise, or C2ICE platform, enables the networked integration and management of hundreds and even thousands of disparate data sources, including weather, intelligence, legacy databases and remote digital surveillance devices," said Jon Johnson, chief engineer for Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, Colorado Spring Engineering Organization, a leading provider of government and civil command, control and intelligence systems. "The Sonic ESB product will put us way ahead in that we no longer have to care about what kind of middleware is in Department of Defense and homeland security systems as they stand alone." "ESBs enable incremental integration, allowing organizations to start with departmental integration projects, safe in the knowledge that they can readily extend the integration infrastructure as broadly as necessary," said Gordon Van Huizen, vice president of product management for Sonic Software. "As a result ESBs are cost-effective, yet provide organizations with the ability to scale to large numbers of applications and services across a distributed enterprise. Moreover, ESBs allow organizations to leverage the two most highly valued assets in the IT organization: the existing infrastructure and their IT staff." Enhancements in Sonic ESB 5.0 include: Enhanced Distributed Management Framework: A Java Management Extensions (JMX)-based management infrastructure makes configuration, deployment, monitoring and diagnosis of thousands of distributed services possible. All of these management functions can be performed from a unified management dashboard. High Availability & Scalability: Sonic ESB provides transparent access to redundant communication servers to enable the high-availability required by mission critical deployments. Pluggable Security: A pluggable security framework provides the ability to integrate across the multiple security domains that co-exist within an enterprise, or between business partners. This ensures that connected information and applications honor established security policies. Integrated Development Tools: Sonic ESB is integrated with Sonic Stylus Studio, an award-winning XML development tool that includes a visual XSLT transformation mapper and debugger and an XQuery expression builder, as well as XML document and schema editors. With this new tool bundle, developer productivity increases to rapidly accelerate time-to-deployment for these projects. Pricing and Availability Sonic ESB will be available on April 28th at a price of $10,000 per server CPU. About Sonic Software Sonic Software provides the first comprehensive business integration suite built on an enterprise service bus (ESB). The Sonic product line delivers a distributed, standards-based, cost-effective, easily managed infrastructure that reliably integrates applications and orchestrates business processes across the extended enterprise. Sonic is the world's fastest growing integration and middleware company and counts global leaders among over 500 customers in financial services, energy, telecommunications and manufacturing. Sonic is an independent operating company of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a $300 million software industry leader. Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., Sonic Software can be reached on the Web at www.sonicsoftware.com, or by phone at +1-781-999-7000 or 1-866-GET-SONIC. Contact Sonic Software Trip Kucera Tel: +1 781/999-7142 Email: trip.kucera@sonicsoftware.com [Source: http://www.sonicsoftware.com/sonic/news/pressrelease_108138/pritem.ssp] Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive.