Big Blue said it is more closely aligning its SOA and information management software and services offerings. Specifically, its IBM Global Business Services arm will come out with a new version of its Service Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA) framework, which it said will help clients develop and implement a long-term plan for moving to SOA.
It also unveiled WebSphere Information Analyzer, a new module for IBM Information Server that it claimed helps customers eliminate the risk of reusing bad data. IBM Information Server also has new capabilities that complement WebSphere Process Server: this enables tighter integration between information and business processes, IBM said.
Finally a new extension to Rational Data Architect bolsters IBM’s industry-specific data models. The tool is said to help organizations in the banking, financial markets, insurance, retail, healthcare and telecommunications industries get more value from the IBM Industry Data Models, which in turn help accelerate the development of information services within Information Server.
Putting SOA and what IBM calls information management – or data quality and integration technologies and services – together, is not a brand new trend.
But announcements like this from IBM, and the recent news from Progress Software that it is bringing together several products from its various divisions and subsidiaries (for instance the Sonic ESB, Actional SOA management and governance and DataXtend data integration products) under a single Enterprise Infrastructure Division banner, show a certain maturation of thinking around SOA that speaks to the fact that web services count for little without accurate, timely, and accessible information and data services to feed them.
