Not long ago, the mere mention of the word integration would be enough to give many a CIO a nervous tick; as memories of expensive projects that failed to deliver would come flooding back. Thankfully, the move towards service-oriented architectures (SOAs) is beginning to break down the information silos.

SOA embodies many ideas, but one of the fundamental technologies is web services. In many brownfield sites, adapters are needed to either mimic or replace these services, and it is this need that is driving the demand seen by iWay now.

iWay is well known for its adapters and integration capabilities that manage and route transformed messages as part of what is marketed as an enterprise service bus, but offers much more. For business intelligence (BI), iWay software allows data to be accessed and integrated from a variety of sources, either using traditional data warehousing techniques that rely on data extraction, transform and load, or data federation.

iWay Service Manager is a complete, integrated design environment that removes the need to code interfaces, write process code, and specify translation and transformation routines within the developed process-based applications. The iWay Service Manager can be considered as a third-generation integration product; moving the first- and second-generation styles of point-to-point and hub-and-spoke into the new space that allows for more dynamic coupling between applications and infrastructure elements.

The iWay Service Manager is a runtime management system, and is less concerned with the management of the SOA environment (although tools are available for this) than the actuality of ensuring controlled and controllable throughput during the execution of the process or transaction.

For Information Builders, the integration of WebFocus (the company’s flagship product) with iWay has brought about other capabilities such as real-time functionality and alerting. Furthermore, the company recently unveiled an event-based compliance solution that brings together WebFocus’s core reporting and analysis capabilities, and iWay’s data adapters and Service Manager, with event-driven technology from Israel-based Prizmasoft, to deliver a controlled, event-driven management platform for supporting the compliance lifecycle.

The integration capabilities and middleware technology offered by iWay give Information Builders’ WebFocus a clear differentiator from many of its BI competitors, and are clearly one of the strengths of this solution. iWay Software provides WebFocus with a rich set of pre-built components that enable it to access 300 or so data sources, package applications, back-office systems, and standardized information exchanges across all major industry initiatives. Moreover, iWay gives WebFocus the ability and supporting functionality to offer leading-edge, real-time business monitoring and performance management applications.

WebFocus, as an integral part of a SOA, can combine data from internal and external sources to create unified, insightful reports. The company would do well to put these features into more pre-packaged solutions than it offers now, particularly for corporate performance management, which represents a fast-growing market.

From an integration point of view, the UK may be leading the demand currently, but the market is expected to grow elsewhere too, thereby providing Information Builders with more opportunities for growth. This, combined with its recent initiatives to focus more on the EMEA region and the mid-market, should help the company attain and sustain a healthy rate of growth.

Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)