Wednesday, August 15, 2007

The Last Mile of SOA.. What's that?

Have a web service you want to write or someone else's you'd like to consume? Say an address validation web service, a trouble ticketing log web service, a web service that monitors and records information into your analytical systems or even a simple web service that creates a shipping record into one of the main shipping company systems.

All very well and good but how the heck do you consume a web service when it's likely going to involve some heavy lifting development effort to get it into your existing applications (assuming too, you own those systems)?

What we call the last mile of SOA, really means integrating web services RIGHT NOW. Since OpenSpan inserts itself into running desktop applications, it can intercept what a user does, what data is where and even what the application does with that data. Armed with all that information (and no coding), OpenSpan allows even complex Web Services to be integrated with that information, based upon any event or trigger from the user, you define. Until Legacy systems go away (never), this approach is one of the most immediate and agile approaches to integrating web services and legacy systems. Real-time desktop application integration has come of age.

As you will read (see news), our new partnership with Aspect Software, enables their customers to interact with the Aspect Web Services, Right Now, without ripping out the back end, which would normally take years and large development efforts.

The last mile of SOA may seem like a strange term to describe some of what we do, but it's as good as any... and it works..

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Francis,

Was reading comments on one of the news sites about Openspan, and the post mentioned Seagull, Attachmate, Blue Prism, Jacada & others. He said your product was a "same thing" copy, and poo-pooed it's impact. The next poster disagreed, but did not clearly explain/compare/contrast the differences. Having been in your presentation, I have a "gut feeling" the 2nd poster is the correct one (those VC partners are not known for being sloppy, either :-), but I don't see the kind of info I would need to confirm that on the OpenSpan website. Perhaps it is here in your blog and I haven't found it yet. A post to that effect might be helpful.

Ted T.

Francis Carden said...

You always get the ney-saya's :) Truth is, if it *was* the same thing, then they would have cleaned up in the market... some of these guys have been playing at this for a while with a very different approach.

This space needed a revolutionary approach that OpenSpan brings. The ability to not have to bring in groups of hard core developers to build integrations around legacy systems.

OpenSpan's approach is Robust and with a Visual Designer, allows integrations around existing stuffly quickly (RIGHT NOW).

Integration of legacy applications should be mostly product, not services. THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE.

Thanks for your comments,

Anonymous said...

Ted

The second poster was indeed correct. As an Openspan customer I can confirm that is very much not a copy of Jacada or Seagull. The product is extremely rapid to deploy, the concepts simple to use and intuitive. Automations and process integration is achieved in a sophisticated fashion, and ROI delivered with ease.

I'd recommend you take Openspan up on an offer to trial the product through a Proof of Concept. You won't look back.

Martyn