Sonic updates Actional SOA management software

Computerworld - Sonic Software Corp. today announced a new version of its Actional service-oriented architecture (SOA) management software, which is designed to give business users more visibility into business processes.

Actional 6.0 is focused on helping companies learn more about services interactions within the business context they’re used to, and it includes automated runtime governance to enforce services policies, said sonic Chief Technology Officer Dan Foody. The new version also allows users to secure an end-to-end process flow and to create and enforce security at the process level.

“The business person is now starting to get involved in the SOA initiatives,” Foody said. “What the business owners value is significantly different than from what the traditional IT techies value. It is not the ordering, fulfillment or inventory service [but] the end-to-end order-through-fulfillment process the business user is interested in.”

Actional 6.0 centers on business process visibility, which allows companies to view only the infrastructure that supports a specific business process. It also allows them to author, govern and enforce policy at the process level without the need for traditional business process management (BPM) tools, Foody said. While BPM tools require a user-defined input of process flows, the Actional approach allows users to automatically discover a service infrastructure and the relationships behind each process.

For example, in a process that may include a dozen steps -- only a handful of which require auditing under Sarbanes-Oxley compliance requirements -- the software can apply policies that create an audit trail for just those specific steps. If the steps in the process are changed, the software will apply policies only to those that need to be audited for compliance, Foody said.

Janet Park, director of architecture and systems integration at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., said the new software will allow the company to define its own customized business processes and generate business metrics around them. “By using Actional, we can tie the business service operations aspect with more of IT infrastructure management,” she said.

Starwood is using older versions of Actional’s Web services management software to manage services. The hotel company is also using it for load balancing while it rewrites its reservation system to run within an SOA.

New security features in Actional 6.0 will allow Starwood to “obtain the last mile of security” within its SOA, she said.

Sonic acquired the Actional technology when its parent company, Progress Software Corp., announced plans last month to buy Actional Corp.

Actional 6.0 is set to ship March 6.