Sun blends SeeBeyond, in-house technologies for SOA

Sun Microsystems on Thursday is set to make a play in the SOA space.

The company is re-branding technology gained from SeeBeyond, mixing it with in-house software, and presenting the package as the Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite, or Java CAPS. Sun acquired SeeBeyond, with its Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) technology, for $387 million last summer .

"This suite is designed for enterprises that are looking to address challenging business integration development projects," said Joe Keller, vice president of marketing for SOA and integration platforms at Sun. "It combines the power of the pieces of the Java Enterprise System, like the [Sun Java Application Platform Suite], with the integration technology from SeeBeyond to create a platform for building secure and scalable SOAs."

With the package, Sun seeks to provide a solution that enables composite applications to be developed with almost no coding. The package can work on multiple operating platforms, including Sun's own Solaris as well as Windows or Linux.

Java CAPS features improved versions of Sun and SeeBeyond technologies. It includes:

-- Sun Java B2B Suite, for managing business-to-business requirements. This is former SeeBeyond technology.

-- Sun Java ESB Suite, an enterprise service bus package for messaging infrastructures, supporting Web services, XML, transformation and intelligent routing. This also was a SeeBeyond technology.

-- Sun Java Application Platform Suite, which is Sun's package for managing the performance and security of business applications. It enables use of process-driven portals that deliver role-based composite applications.

-- Sun Java Web Infrastructure Suite, also a legacy Sun product. It is intended to improve Web security, strengthen online customer and partner relationships and reduce Web operations costs.

Sun's SOA suites drew mostly a thumbs-up from one industry analyst.

"What they've done is they've taken the SeeBeyond suite and they've done some integration with their portal, the Sun portal, and they've done a little integration with the Java development tools," from Sun, said Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Current Analysis.

The eInsight business process tool from SeeBeyond is important for Sun, Willett said. "They really didn't have a process tool before this," he said. 

But Sun is not the first to market with a process tool, Willett said. "Sun is coming out with something like this later than IBM or Microsoft," said Willett.

Java CAPS components are available as a complete package or separately. The full offering is priced at $100 per employee per year, based on the number of employees at each user site. The component suites of Java CAPS purchased individually cost $50 per employee annually. The suites are available in March.

Sun also is unveiling three professional services programs for SOA. SOA Jumpstart Workshop is geared toward those getting started in SOA. SOA Opportunity Assessment is for planning an organization-wide SOA and SOA Governance Solution is for implementation, management and governance of an SOA. Services prices vary, starting at $5,000.