Software AG and Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation announced the CentraSite Community, an initiative that brings both alliance partners and customers together to create a complete service-oriented architecture (SOA) ecosystem. Formed to help organizations successfully design, implement, manage, govern and optimize an SOA, the CentraSite Community will foster business agility by providing customers with partners’ pre-integrated SOA assets stored in CentraSite, a standards-based SOA registry and repository. Jointly developed by Fujitsu and Software AG, CentraSite represents the foundation of this Community. In a separate release today, Fujitsu and Software AG also announced the general availability of CentraSite Version 2.1.

The CentraSite Community is a unique approach to:

Uniting alliance partners to deliver standards-based, interoperable SOA solutions

Providing customers with a single destination for SOA best practices and the latest industry information by  leveraging social media tools (e.g., discussion forums, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and more)

CentraSite Community – Uniting Partners to Deliver Standards-Based, Interoperable SOA Solutions

“The formation of the CentraSite Community is a major development in the delivering of advanced SOA.  Vendors must deliver more cohesive solutions that customers can deploy with confidence,” said Dr. Peter Kuerpick, member of the board at Software AG and responsible for the development of crossvision. “Adoption of SOA offers organizations tremendous opportunity to achieve unprecedented levels of adaptability and agility within their enterprises. The CentraSite Community will ensure this becomes a reality, and it will provide customers with far greater confidence in their purchasing decisions.”

“The CentraSite Community demonstrates Fujitsu’s complete commitment to the SOA market,” said Robert Sepanloo, senior vice president of Enterprise Software Group, Fujitsu Computer Systems. “We recognize that the very nature of SOA requires that vendors work collaboratively to guarantee standards-based, interoperable solutions that maximize the reusability of existing services, ensure faster ROI, and scale for future growth. CentraSite and the CentraSite Community form a major industry initiative to reach these key goals.”

Sponsor Benefits
Sponsorship in the CentraSite Community is free, and to date, 15 Strategic Sponsors have joined in addition to founding Sponsors Software AG and Fujitsu. Each Sponsor benefits from the CentraSite Community by being able to:

Distribute licenses of the CentraSite Community Edition software free of charge to their partners and customers with their solutions

Contribute to setting the direction for the CentraSite product by participating in architecture committees

Demonstrate market leadership by contributing to a common vision for SOA

CentraSite Community – Providing Customers with an Innovative SOA Information Portal

The CentraSite Community will appeal to customers looking for guidance on their SOA deployments as it takes an innovative approach to leveraging the “wisdom of crowds.” Over the coming months, the CentraSite Community will feature:

Case studies, best practices and other guidelines, FAQs, and links to relevant articles and industry news

Discussion forums

Industry blogs

Surveys to engage the community in defining industry trends

Podcasts that tackle relevant topics and discuss industry developments

Archives of past webinars

CentraSite Community – Sponsors

CentraSite’s Strategic Sponsors have lauded the effort on the part of Fujitsu and Software AG to form an SOA ecosystem.

Active Endpoints
“By offering solutions that are platform neutral and 100 percent standards compliant, we aim to radically change the economics of the integration market,” said Andrew Dennis, VP corporate development, Active Endpoints.  “By participating in the CentraSite Community, we will help customers to quickly achieve success using BPEL as a cornerstone of their integration strategies.”

AmberPoint
“The integration of AmberPoint with CentraSite provides a unique combination of elements to bring both services and business processes together under the umbrella of a strong approach to SOA governance,” said John Hubinger, CEO of AmberPoint.  “We look forward to working together with CentraSite Community partners for the long-term benefit of our mutual enterprise customers around the world.”

arcplan
“arcplan Enterprise brings the CentraSite Community the ability to deploy real-time business analytic services, consuming and enriching all web services orchestrated by the CentraSite SOA environment,” said Roland Hoelscher, managing director.  “We look forward to working in this collaborative environment for the mutual benefit of our customers.”

BeSeQure
“BeSeQure offers a unique and complete security solution for service-oriented architectures that can be applied without programming expenses,” said Dr. Bruno Quint, managing director of BeSeQure GmbH. “Our participation in the CentraSite Community will help enhance the management and governance concerns with the necessary security.”

Forum Systems
“Sharing success stories is particularly relevant when one looks to implement resilient IT solutions, and Forum Systems works with some of the world's largest and most mature SOA deployments to date. We are joining the CentraSite Community to share what we've learned in SOA risk reduction and accelerated delivery of business value,” said Walid Negm, vice president of marketing and strategy at Forum Systems.

Hasso Plattner Institute
“The Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) is excited with the opportunity to participate with so many leading vendors in the CentraSite Community, an important initiative in the SOA market,” said Prof. Dr. Andreas Polze, head of the Operating Systems and Middleware group at HPI. “In particular, Service Composition will play an increasingly important role within future business applications,” added Prof. Dr. Mathias Weske, head of the Business Process Technology group at HPI.

IDS Scheer
“IDS Scheer’s ARIS Platform for Process Excellence offers organizations an integrated and complete tool portfolio for strategy, design, implementation and controlling of business processes,” said Dr. Wolfram Jost, member of the executive board and head of the product division at IDS Scheer AG.  “Our sponsorship of the CentraSite Community is driven by our recognition that business processes must be fully understood for successful SOA implementations.”

ILOG
“ILOG's Business Rule Management Systems are delivering flexible and transparent decision services in service-oriented architectures at leading Global 2000 companies, while enabling better business/IT collaboration,” said ILOG Chairman and CEO Pierre Haren. “We are pleased to join the CentraSite Community to promote best practices for SOA development for the benefit of our customers.”

Layer 7
“Layer 7 is pleased to be participating in the CentraSite Community, as SOA requires an ecosystem approach to effectively secure, manage and govern an SOA. By bringing together leading products in security, management, integration, BPM and registry within a single interoperable framework, the CentraSite Community offers end-users a simplified SOA adoption roadmap,” explained Dimitri Sirota, VP of marketing and alliances for SOA security vendor Layer 7 Technologies.

Mindjet
“Mindjet is focused on delivering the benefits of information visualization to businesses to organize information for faster and more effective decision making,” said Chris Holmes, VP of business strategy and corporate development. “Mindjet is excited to bring our information mapping expertise and the capabilities of our MindManager application to the CentraSite Community.”

Mindreef
“Mindreef's innovative products help CentraSite customers test and verify the quality of their SOAs,” said Frank Grossman, Mindreef president and co-founder. “We share the CentraSite Community's vision of extensive SOA reuse and enhanced collaboration, and look forward to helping CentraSite customers drive pervasive quality into their SOA deployments.”

ontoprise
“By delivering information in a business context, the semantic integration approach plays a key role in SOAs,” said Prof. Dr. Jürgen Angele, general manager of ontoprise.  “ontoprise is excited to be a CentraSite Community Sponsor as it brings together ontologies with services and technologies from leading SOA vendors.”

OpenAir
“Our customers typically choose to create their own IT ecosystems that rely on multiple vendors to provide specific expertise, like ours in professional services automation,” said Morris Panner, OpenAir CEO.  “Managing and governing SOA artifacts is a critical requirement for our customers and we joined the CentraSite Community to offer our business process expertise.”

Parasoft
“In the era of service-oriented architectures, consistency is the key to success,” said Wayne Ariola, vice president of corporate development at Parasoft Corporation.  “Parasoft Automated Error Prevention solutions in conjunction with the CentraSite Community Sponsors will ensure secure, reliable and compliant service-oriented architectures.”

Vordel
Vordel CTO, Mark O'Neill welcomed this announcement, stating, “Vordel’s participation in the CentraSite Community smoothes the way for customers to further enjoy the benefits of rolling out their large-scale SOA deployments in a secure, managed environment.  CentraSite provides the ideal storage for all security and management policies, and Vordel provides enforcement of these policies across the enterprise SOA.”

To access the CentraSite Community and for more information on becoming a CentraSite Community Sponsor, visit http://www.soaworks.com.