The complete SOA platform

Today, enterprises expectations expand well beyond service hosting, ESB and service governance, when it comes to enterprise applications. The need for monitoring, the need for analyzing and the need for orchestrating and fine tuning business processes has become real to realize the agile enterprise.

However, it is a matter of fact, that, supporting all these needs require a comprehensive set of tools.

More than four years ago, WSO2 began the journey to build this comprehensive SOA stack with support for connectivity services using Apache Axis2 as the base, and came up with WSO2 WSAS. Then began the effort on WSO2 ESB, using Apache Synapse as the basis. Data services support was also implemented, with an innovative approach to allow DBAs to stick with SQL and yet leverage the power of Apache Axis2 based web services capabilities.

Once we had the connectivity services, data service and ESB working to a decent level, WSO2 started working on making SOA governance a reality. We built a registry and also worked on identity server. And we also built a mashups server, and again, going by WSO2's revolutionary think tank to be innovative, we adopted a unique approach for service orchestration - using JavaScript.

As the SOA tooling platform evolved, WSO2's award winning CTO, Paul, sensed the need for a unified base for the platform. And the company started working on the WSO2 Carbon platform. This component oriented design, based on OSGi technology, set the stage for WSO2 to unify crosscutting concerns such as security, eventing, reporting, user interface, etc. across the SOA enabling products. It also paved the way for WSO2 to come up with new products in quick time, thanks to the ability to mix and match existing components in the component repository with new components built to meet new product needs.

With the middleware component platform in place, WSO2 started building tools to realize business process, presentation and business monitoring needs of the enterprises. Business process server was built to leverage the power of BPEL, using Apache ODE, to enable users to manage business processes.

Then came the effort to complete the last mile. We needed to support the presentation layer, as well as tools to help monitor business with KPI monitoring and BI capabilities. The gadget server was built using Apache Shinding, and as always, it was a revolutionary and innovative approach that was taken by WSO2, using sate of the art technology to build a new breed of portal server. We also built a business activity monitor, mainly using the extensibility of Apache Axis2, but also keeping it open to allow any SOA system to be monitored, using an event based model.

With today's announcements on WSO2 Gadget Server and WSO2 Business Activity Monitor, WSO2 SOA platform becomes the most comprehensive and also the most complete open source SOA platform around. And it might not be an over statement to mention that, we have left the fellow open source based competitors in he dust, by addressing the platform aspect, and not focusing on one or two requirements of the SOA platform. And WSO2 is now in a position to take over industry leaders in this space, such as IBM and Oracle. The competitive advantage of WSO2 here is that, while the SOA middleware platform is enterprise class, it is lean. Anyone can get any of the product up and running, within minutes, not days and not even hours. All products are based on the philosophy of zero code with respect to configuration. And all products being based on a unified platform, they look consistent - little learning time, and they act consistent - no surprises.

The good new is that, we have a complete platform today. The better news is that, WSO2 is not done, we just started...