JSE-listed ICT solutions and services specialist Faritec has become the first IBM partner in South Africa to be awarded accreditation to sell and implement IBM DataPower Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) appliances.
IBM DataPower simplifies, accelerates and enhances the security capabilities of customers' XML and Web services deployments. In addition, it extends the capabilities of an organisation's SOA infrastructure.
Malcolm Hart, Architecture and Technical Strategy Manager of Faritec's Integrated Business Solutions Division, says: "This solution is ideal for any company considering SOA, as well as those which have already embarked on an SOA journey. IBM DataPower takes the computationally expensive processing of XML messages and offloads it onto a more cost-effective platform."
A Premier IBM Business Partner, Faritec has completed all the certification and training necessary to qualify for IBM DataPower accreditation. Faritec has already implemented IBM DataPower at two of South Africa's Big 4 banks, and is in discussions with a number of large corporations in the financial services, telecommunications and public sectors.
According to Hart, IBM DataPower offers an innovative, pragmatic approach to harness the power of SOA as purpose-built, easy-to-consume and easy-to-use products, while simultaneously helping organisations to leverage the value of their existing infrastructure investments.
The latest generation of IBM DataPower SOA appliances provides improved performance and serviceability.
"The key drivers for choosing IBM DataPower are enhanced performance, security, simplicity and integration," Hart says. "It takes the place of software, which has traditionally been deployed on a server, taking away a great deal of pain and expense for the customer. IBM DataPower enables customers to use XML more richly, greatly reducing constraints related to performance and security."
From a security perspective, IBM DataPower SOA appliances provide an easy-to-install and easy-to-maintain network appliance, which can satisfy both application and network operational groups, supporting current and emerging security standards, as well as XML Web services standards out-of-the-box.
Furthermore, IBM DataPower delivers common message transformation, integration and routing functions in a network device, helping to cut operational costs, reduce complexity, and improve performance.
"By making on-demand data integration part of the shared SOA infrastructure, DataPower appliances are designed to be a game-changing approach for application integration and SOA," Hart says.
Another significant benefit is the ease and speed with which IBM DataPower is implemented.
"This easy-to-install, drop-in solution streamlines XML and Web service deployments, helping lower total cost of ownership and accelerating return on assets as the organisation continues to move to SOA," Hart says. "SOA appliances are purpose-built hardware devices capable of offloading overtaxed servers by processing XML, Web services and other message format at wire-speed."
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