Stefan Van Overtveldt, vice president for IT Transformation at BT Global Services, told Computer Business Review that the up-front costs of integration projects, as well as the ongoing management overheads, are prohibitive for many enterprises. The up-front cost of hardware and software, and then the complexity of implementing the software, has driven the cost of many integration projects above 1 million pounds just to get started, he said.
BT said the BT Integrate pay-as-you-grow subscription-based pricing model delivers predictable cost of ownership and reduces the need for upfront investment in new technology and skills. It also reduces integration management complexity and is faster to deploy than alternative approaches, according to the company.
Specifically, the service consists of hardware integration appliances that are deployed where required within a customer’s existing network. These run a hardened version of Linux, are rack-mounted and Intel-based, and come in uni-, dual-, or quad-processor versions.
Sonic Software’s ESB integration technology is embedded inside each appliance, and appliances can be clustered, with Sonic’s ESB handling virtualization and fault-tolerance across a cluster. You would need something like a big Tandem machine or an IBM P-Series HACMP to achieve this kind of thing, Overtveldt said.
There is also a centralized management portal that enables customers to configure BT Integrate and monitor service performance. BT then monitors and manages the appliances remotely from a central BT facility, with 24/7 operations support delivering implementation, pro-active management, service assurance, and backup. Users pay monthly per appliance.
Overtveldt said BT only sees the management and performance data generated by the appliance, not the actual business data being integrated, which would pose a security and compliance and risk if it were the case.
As for exactly the type of applications and data that can be integrated using the appliances, Overtveldt said that thanks to iWay Software’s library of application adapters there are some 300 packaged application or data standard integrations possible, from SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, to CICS, IMS, Notes, and VSAM, as well as all the common middlewares like BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and Tibco.
Overtveldt refuted the suggestion that the integration appliances are little more than a foot in the door for BT Global Services. He said that if customers have the necessary skills, they can use tools provided by BT to configure their own integration patterns, after which BT will simply monitor and manage the integration appliance remotely for the customer.
The appliances themselves sound like they bear a passing similarity to Cast Iron Systems’ integration appliances, which also offer appliance-based integration, monitoring, and performance-management. However, the BT offering is only available in the UK, and is closer to a hosted service since BT itself does the management and monitoring, whereas Cast Iron Systems simply sells the appliances and leaves users with the management and monitoring tools.
