SOA/Web Services

ACS is an active participant in service oriented architecture (SOA), a growing industry trend. We have developed tools, products and components, accelerated development toolkits and built domain knowledge to realize this paradigm shift.

An SOA leverages open standards to represent all software assets and services, including legacy applications, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems, custom development applications, J2EE/.NET components, CORBA objects, EDI and Web Services, to name a few. Such an approach provides users with a standard way to represent and interact with software assets without spending time working with unique interfaces and low-level APIs.

Using the new SOA paradigm helps reduce complexity, cost and risk of integration by providing a single, simple architectural framework based on Web Services in which to build, deploy and manage application functionality. In other words, service-oriented architectures allow enterprises to do more with less.

ACS has selectively invested in this new technology and developed tools and components that provide the means to accelerate SOA development and deployment. Our code-generation toolkits, out-of-the-box adapters for end-point connectivity and management and orchestration tools can execute complex composite processes.

ACS has been a leader in SOA and led development and industry trends in the area of SOA/Web Services product development. We were among the first companies in the world to have a business process execution language (BPEL) based on our composite application builder suite built entirely from Web Services technologies.

Application Integration

In today’s dynamic business environment, new, large scale, process level changes involve extensive integration efforts that are extremely labor-, time- and cost-intensive. While investment in newer packages is always an attractive alternative, this approach has its own setbacks.

First, there is too much value locked up in existing applications that deliver the goods. Second, the technology risk and cost associated with newer technologies make the process highly risky. Finally, given the rate at which the technology landscape is changing (with technologies becoming obsolete in a couple of months!), there is always the danger of trading one set of troubles for another.

As a result, there is a need for a solution that consolidates and leverages existing IT resources and promotes a best of breed or mix and match build approach, rather than a create from scratch or a one-size-fits-all approach.

Traditional middleware software provided connectivity that involved a set of enabling services with multiple processes running on one or more machines across a network. Essentially the main purpose was data integration, with a measure of component integration thrown in.

Although the technology for middleware programming has improved greatly in the past decade, the extended implementation cycles and costs of implementing a full scale EAI solution doesn’t make it viable. In addition, a full scale EAI platform implementation invariably trades one set of problems for another, as the need to plug into the EAI platform from different technology platforms results in major custom development.

ACS’s experience in developing solutions on integration platforms ranges from WebMethods, Tuxedo, Vitria, TIBCO and SeeBeyond, to custom adapter development to legacy systems, programming on MoMs and component-based integration.

Additionally, ACS has been at the forefront of using Web Services technologies for integration with backend enterprise application packages such as SAP and has developed a product for providing process-level integration built from ground up on Web Services technologies with a BPEL engine for composite application development.