The SOA Gateway is an extremely flexible tool that can be useful in a number of different scenarios. This page gives an overview of each scenario where the SOA Gateway can play a role.

Limited Integration Projects

Where there is a small amount of integration required in a project, it rarely makes sense to invest in one of the large integration tool stacks due to the cost of these tools. The SOA Gateway’s licensing model ensures that the smallest of projects can be implemented using the SOA Gateway in an extremely cost effective manner.

Enterprise Projects

In large enterprise projects, when traditional tools and methods are used, the integration effort can take up to 70% of the cost of a project and can take months to implement. Using the SOA Gateway, business logic and data can be made available in minutes thus ensuring the project runs smoother and the efforts can be focused on the new business application that is being implemented.

Rapid Application Prototyping

There are many rapid application development tools and environments on the market, however these can rarely prototype a new application using existing business data or logic. The SOA Gateway can facilitate access to existing business data and logic so that the end user for, whom a prototype is being created, can see exactly how the application will look with real business data. Once the user interface has been agreed, the architecture can be reviewed to determine if it makes sense to write business logic to access data directly or whether it makes sense to continue using the SOA Gateway to access the data directly.

Software Contract Between Organizations or Departments

In order to have software in one department or organization interfacing with another department or organization, traditional EDI mechanisms take many months to agree and implement and generally end up being very brittle. Something changes on one side and the communication breaks. The SOA Gateway offers the capability to develop a ‘software contract’ between the two entities in minutes. This contract dictates how the entities will exchange data but leaves both entities free behind the scenes to change how they process incoming messages or return outgoing messages. If the information needs to change, it simply requires a new version of the contract to be created.

Migration from a Language, Database or Platform

Many organizations are using platforms, languages or databases which, while a good choice when originally selected, have perhaps become less appropriate over time. For example, Linux now provides an extremely cost effective platform for some applications. Migrating from an existing platform can be prone to problems due to the ‘big bang’ approach that is needed. The SOA Gateway can help to break such a move down to smaller steps by creating services to use the existing data and business logic. These services can be used to migrate to the new client technology. In parallel, the services can be recreated on the new platform or database, or in the new language and tested. Once testing is complete, it’s simply a case of pointing the new client technology at the new services and the older system may be decommissioned.

Central Hub for all Web Services

Many companies are investing heavily in Web Services and are concerned that they are being created in different forms on different platforms. The SOA Gateway provides the platform where all Web Services can be created thus providing uniformity to the Web Services not easily achievable when other different technologies are used. It also provides a central point for the run time governance of those web services thus enabling services to be controlled appropriately with one single product.

Trialing of New and Emerging Technologies

New technologies are appearing on an almost weekly basis. In all cases, organizations are very keen to test these new technologies themselves. Traditionally it has been very difficult if not impossible without significant effort to test these technologies with an organizations’ existing data and business logic. The SOA Gateway enables you to instantly make your data and services available to these new technologies so that you get the advantage of trialing the technology with your own data and business logic.