Ascential Software, the unquestioned leader in the enterprise data integration market, has become the first vendor in this space to join the Web Services Interoperability Organisation (WS-I) (
http://www.ws-i.org
).
The WS-I is an open, broadly based industry organisation committed to promoting consistent and reliable interoperability among Web services across platforms, applications and programming languages. Ascential joins more than 100 other companies that have joined WS-I since its official launch in February.
"As the industry leader in end-to-end enterprise data integration, Ascential is pursuing a data integration strategy that mirrors the WS-I`s mission to ensure uniform interoperability among Web services," says Julian Field, GM, Ascential Software South Africa. "Ascential will play an important role in sharing its expertise in enterprise data integration to resolve incompatibilities among complex Web services."
In March, Ascential announced plans to provide a transformation middle layer that will allow applications to be integrated truly through Web services, thereby allowing companies to develop and deploy complex Web services.
Although Web services provide standardised interfaces that facilitate connectivity between applications and processes, connectivity alone does not equal integration. Ascential`s DataStage enterprise data integration platform provides the critical mapping and transformation service that, combined with Web services interfaces, truly enables application integration.
"Today, the world of Web services consists mainly of pipes that can be bolted together successfully, without regards to whether the data flowing through those pipes will mix well together to achieve the customer`s objective," says Field. "Our goal with Web services is to change that old approach and minimise the investment our customers need to make to integrate data by using all forms of connectivity between enterprise systems, leveraging existing investments and integrating those with new investments in Web services."
DataStage will be extended to integrate with and be exposed as a Web service. This includes the ability to integrate processes and applications that have Web services interfaces as part of a data integration project, as well as exposing data integration projects as Web services. This new capability also addresses what Gartner Group calls "Transitionary Web Services", allowing customers to use DataStage to request, normalise and deliver data between two or more incompatible Web services.
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