News release

HP Launches New Offerings to Lead the Service-oriented Enterprise to Successful Adoption of SOA

	Related Links
	»	Software
	»	SOA services
	»	View the press kit

HP today launched new offerings to bring service-oriented architecture (SOA) out of the prototype stage and into successful enterprise deployment.

With a new combination of software and services for SOA, HP is enabling customers to mitigate business risk and deliver high-quality, measurable business outcomes from SOA initiatives.

SOA is a business and IT architecture style that supports business integration as linked services that can be quickly aligned to changing business needs. HP provides organizations with the flexibility to optimize SOA business services regardless of the underlying infrastructure.

“SOA is entirely transforming the way IT is created, delivered and consumed, providing organizations with a software and systems infrastructure that is more agile and cost-effective and that delivers better business outcomes,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “HP is committed to providing the tools and expertise customers need to begin adopting SOA successfully. Our open, standards-based approach maximizes the business benefit from their SOA initiatives.”

HP’s Business Technology Optimization (BTO) for SOA is an integrated set of software and services designed to help customers address some of the biggest challenges in SOA adoption, including: Gaining control over the lifecycle of services creation and reuse; Reducing the risk of low-quality, poor-performing services; Managing services and application in production; Identifying and resolving SOA-related problems before they negatively impact the business; and Utilizing services regardless of the underlying integration platform.

“A strong governance, quality and management program – addressing the entire service lifecycle from design and development through operations and maintenance – is critically important to a successful SOA initiative,” said Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director, Burton Group. “Enterprise-wide SOA systems are likely to encompass heterogeneous computing environments; therefore, organizations should adopt a standards-based, platform-neutral approach to governance, quality and management, and they should keep interoperability high on their list of priorities.”

HP’s new SOA products and services

Capitalizing on its acquisition last year of Mercury and including key Systinet governance offerings, HP’s BTO for SOA helps customers establish a practical, flexible and incremental approach for deploying SOA governance, quality and management across their organizations.

Governance:

• HP SOA Systinet 2.51 software includes new lifecycle management and workflow capabilities that improve service controls.
• Extended capabilities for policy management configuration for SOA include new integrations among HP SOA products to enable enterprise-wide policy management from design time to enforcement and run time. This increases the benefits of SOA by ensuring services are re-used and not re-created.

Quality:

• Extended capabilities of HP Change Impact Testing dramatically improve testing efficiency while reducing costs.
• Extended capabilities of HP Business Process Testing software for SOA bridge the quality chasm between subject matter experts and quality engineers by allowing analysts to test business processes in their environment, making it easier to modify service tests as business needs change.

Management:

• HP Business Availability Center software for SOA delivers real-time monitoring and management of web services in production, advanced application problem diagnostics and dynamic application mapping to ensure faster resolution of issues.
• In addition, new and expanded HP Services provide customers with a defined roadmap for SOA adoption by packaging intellectual property, methodologies, tools and best practice strategies. The new services enhance an existing, broad portfolio that includes SOA Envisioning, Assessment, Governance and Architecture, Enablement, Service Development, Software Development and SOA Management.
• HP SOA Center of Excellence – designed to help companies that are ready to move beyond the pilot stage of SOA, the service assists clients in embarking on a broader enterprise-wide SOA program. The core service leverages HP expertise, proven methodologies and templates to assist in establishing a client swat team and to mentor clients through fundamental requirements as they develop their SOA framework for enterprise adoption.
• HP SOA Maturity Self-Assessment Tool – a user-friendly, online assessment tool based on the HP SOA Domain and Maturity Models and SOA research from analyst firm, IDC. Upon completion of an assessment, customers automatically receive a detailed report providing a maturity profile, comparisons against all respondents as well as peers within their industries, and recommendations for improving maturity.

“At Thomson Financial we are always looking for ways to provide our customers the information they need quickly with uncompromising quality,” said Vladimir Mitevski, vice president, Product Management Core Services, Thomson Financial. “We turned to HP to help us implement an SOA to give us this flexibility and business agility. With HP, we were able to reduce time-to-market for deploying services and products from a six-week cycle to just 15 minutes.”

HP SOA open standards-based approach and partner network

To further promote mainstream adoption of SOA, HP is committed to open standards such as the governance interoperability framework, which addresses the broader interdependencies of management, security, business integration, business intelligence and enterprise information integration vendors. The framework allows member companies to publish services and associated policies in a standardized way, be alerted about changes within the registry and gain access to metadata about the range of services that make up a customer’s SOA.

Examples of partners already supporting the Systinet SOA Governance Interoperability Framework are AmberPoint; BEA Systems, Inc.; Cisco and Progress Software, which acquired Actional in 2006.

In addition, to support its broad range of SOA applications platforms and technologies, HP partners with some of the world’s leading companies.

For example, HP supports Microsoft’s “Real World” approach to SOA, which enables customers to leverage existing IT resources to compose new dynamic business applications using the power of the .NET Framework and BizTalk Server.  

HP also supports Oracle Fusion Middleware, which provides the foundation of service-oriented architectures and business solutions that streamline business and IT operations, enables Web 2.0 in the enterprise, improves the accuracy and timeliness of decisions and helps drive security and compliance initiatives.

Additionally, HP supports SAP AG’s business-driven approach to enterprise SOA, which enables customers to measurably increase business agility and flexibility, simplify integration efforts and reduce overall IT costs.

More information regarding today’s news, including links to photos, is available in an online press kit at www.hp.com/go/HPSOA. More information about the HP SOA portfolio is available at www.hp.com/go/SOA.

About HP

HP focuses on simplifying technology experiences for all of its customers – from individual consumers to the largest businesses. With a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP is among the world’s largest IT companies, with revenue totaling $97.1 billion for the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2007. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the achievement of expected results and other risks that are described from time to time in HP’s Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the risks described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended Jan. 31, 2007. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

© 2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.