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Ivory extends mainframe SOA support to non-conventional interfaces and applications
ATLANTA, June 25, 2008 - GT Software (www.gtsoftware.com), 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:
“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.
