It said it has also expanded its Governance Interoperability Framework (GIF), which it describes as one of the industry’s first and most broadly adopted industry specifications for SOA governance interoperability.
HP said the new software and services could help companies accelerate SOA adoption and drive increased business value, while reducing potential risks, such as service disruption to the business.
Effective SOA governance requires customers to establish a system of record that provides visibility into the services in their SOA environment, create a relationship of trust between providers and consumers of services, and secure control over which services are built and released into the production environment, said Avrami Tzur, vice president, SOA, HP. We are committed to providing industry-leading SOA governance solutions to drive better business outcomes for our customers.
The new services include HP Validation and Implementation Services for SOA Governance, Performance, and Quality, which it said will help companies to accelerate delivery of SOA services, reduce risk, and maximize reuse of SOA services.
With the new Validation and Implementation Service for SOA Governance, HP said its consultants can help customers validate a set of SOA services by implementing a governance model using HP SOA Systinet software. Systinet was a repository-based SOA governance player acquired by Mercury Interactive before HP bought Mercury.
The new Validation Service for SOA Performance helps predict, measure and optimize performance of SOA applications and infrastructure, HP said. Its Validation Service for SOA Quality establishes processes for managing the business risk of SOA-enabled services.
HP also introduced new services to install and configure HP SOA Systinet and HP SOA Manager to enable a quicker return on a customer’s software investment.
Additionally available is a new suite of SOA education and training courses that help customers translate SOA concepts into effective, governable service-based solutions. These new services enhance the HP SOA Center of Excellence Services, enabling customers to apply the concepts of governance to organizational and process structure.
Meanwhile, on the software side, the latest release of HP SOA Systinet software delivers complete design and run-time governance of SOA services, according to HP, as well as service lifecycle management through an enhanced integration with HP SOA Manager.
HP SOA Systinet also enables developers to check services against policies through a new Eclipse-based policy validation plug-in. This will help ensure services conform to business and IT requirements before they are published for consumption, HP said.
HP SOA Systinet software also gets enhanced graphical navigation, advanced reporting, customizable searching and expanded service lifecycle support.
There is also a new HP SOA Registry Foundation, said to be a software product designed for independent software vendors. HP SOA Registry Foundation is a standards-based way to publish, categorize, and discover SOA services and artefacts. This new product can be easily embedded with packaged applications and distributed solutions by ISVs, according to the firm.
Our View
HP has been relatively tight-lipped about the development work and roadmaps for its acquired Mercury Interactive and Systinet technologies. Just a few months ago it declined an interview with us on the anniversary of its Mercury Interactive acquisition, as it said it was too early to talk about its plans for what it bought.
This announcement may not change the world, but it does at least give an idea of HP’s direction with those products. It is building the software out around its Governance Interoperability Framework (GIF), and selling various services alongside the software and framework to kick-start customer implementations.
So while this may not be a dramatic news announcement, it does serve to remind the world that it paid $4.5bn for Mercury Interactive back in July 2006, and that it does have a portfolio of software and services as a result that are worth a look for those undertaking SOA projects. As for whether HP is doing enough to make that $4.5bn acquisition a success where several of its previous software acquisitions have failed remains to be seen.
