PolarLake releases enterprise service bus offering

Dublin, Ireland-based PolarLake this week released PolarLake JIntegrator, which the company describes as the first "Universal Enterprise Service Bus."

The product handles the exchange of XML documents and SOAP messages and enables the extension of Java and J2EE-based XML and Web services systems, the company said.

Expanding multiple message-oriented middleware products, JIntegrator integrates with existing infrastructure such as IBM MQseries, Tibco, HP Openview, Oracle databases, and IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic application servers, PolarLake said.

"Our view is that the ESB is a product that provides the integration layer that handles the exchange of XML documents [and] SOAP messages between applications," said PolarLake CEO Ronan Bradley, in an e-mail response to questions. "Typically, this is happening inside the firewall and the applications are existing, deployed systems," he said.

These exchanges occurs at two levels: business process integration and technology integration, according to Bradley. "We see the ESB as a lightweight and flexible approach to integration, leveraging existing technology and capable of being used from a departmental level all the way up to the enterprise level," he said. "The ESB is being used as an alternative to hand-writing integration frameworks on application servers and as an alternative to high-cost EAI products."

JIntegrator features a runtime server and tool set. PolarLake's product is an alternative to expensive, in-house development of an ESB system. "What we have found is that enterprises which have attempted to use XML or Web services for application integration problems have ended up spending sometimes millions of dollars writing their own ESB frameworks," Bradley said.

"This is a hard problem, and often the frameworks created are too slow, don't scale, and are simply too complex to maintain and extend.  CIOs recognize that this is not a business they want to be in and want to use a product to replace their own framework," he added.

In addition to rolling out JIntegrator, PolarLake next week plans to release the PolarLake Messaging Integrator, which is intended to provide sophisticated document transformation capabilities for complex integration projects.

The company in two weeks plans to release a new version of PolarLake Database Integrator, for integrating relational database applications into an XML or Web services system. The product supports bi-directional mapping between existing relational data and stored procedures and XML, PolarLake said.