Tibco Targets SOA ComplexityTibco Targets SOA Complexity

Tibco Software on Monday released middleware that provides a central container for creating and deploying services in order to simplify the process of implementing a service-oriented architecture across an enterprise's heterogeneous environment.

Called the ActiveMatrix platform, the new product also includes a policy manger to define, distribute and enforce rules for security, auditing, logging, service levels and other application characteristics across services; and a registry licensed from Systinet to provide discovering, categorizing, and publishing of services.

About 60 percent of the time spent developing services is in writing business logic, with the remainder dedicated to building in security, messaging communications and deployment configurations, Jeff Kristick, senior director of product marketing, said. Tibco is looking to take over the latter part of the development process by providing a container that applies the same plumbing across services whether they are in Java or Microsoft .Net, or on custom and packaged applications.

"Drop the business logic into the container, and its exposed as a reusable service," Kristick said.

Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for ZapThink, said in an email that while the Tibco platform may reduce complexity in the short term, its approach could reintroduce it later.

"The challenge Tibco will face is that a middleware approach to SOA will fundamentally be challenged by the problem that has always plagued middleware approaches to dealing with heterogeneity: over time, companies implement multiple different containers, middleware approaches, and other technology systems for dealing with change," Schmelzer said. As a result, companies could end up deploying middleware for their middleware, which could reintroduce more complexity.

Pricing for the ActiveMatrix platform starts at $40,000 per CPU.