With the announcement of Salesforce SOA, Salesforce.com promises "SOA as a service." That's an awfully grandiose claim as SOA is a business-driven approach to organizing an entire enterprise's software functionality, not any one vendor's technology.
What Salesforce really seems to be delivering instead is the first enterprise-class mash-up platform, enabling developers to use its Apex platform to provision the functionality of internal applications as services and orchestrate them together with partner or Salesforce services. That may fall several miles short of SOA as a service, but it could be a boon to businesses that want to develop complex Web applications quickly.
Current SOA efforts are hindered by introducing more complexity, which leads to high failure rates, argues Rene Bonvani, Salesforce.com's senior vice president and general manager of AppExchange and development releases. "The irony is, we're trying to make Web services work by installing more software and hardware on premise," he said. "And we believe that we should not do it through software, not do it through infrastructure, but do it in the cloud." That is, on one particular cloud: the Apex platform.
AppExchange, a marketplace for apps developed on Salesforce.com's ecosystem, was launched 18 months ago -- and the Apex programming language and development platform were released in beta form in January. So what exactly is new? "The new technology is the ability for Apex to call out and coordinate Web services on the platform," Bonvani said. In addition, two weeks ago, Salesforce.com began offering subscriptions to AppExchange alone; previously, AppExchange was available only to Salesforce.com customers.
Connections to Apex applications from a customer's internal applications can be established using Web services APIs or using a range of connectors specific to Oracle Financials, SAP R/3, and other heavy-duty enterprise apps.
This whitepaper explains the terminology and concepts behind Data Replication technologies and establishes some sizing rules through worked examples. Learn the new paradigm in disaster tolerance—protect data anywhere.
Download now »
Server virtualization is a popular option for dealing with mounting datacenter costs. Another equally promising approach is the use of an Application Delivery Controller. Citrix NetScaler provides a low-cost way for organizations to reduce their server count and accrue cost savings from a reduction in space, cooling, power and personnel.
Download now »
The emergence of WLANs has created a new breed of security threats to enterprise networks.
Included in HP ProCurve WLAN solutions is security technology that alleviates threats from WLANs through:
* Monitoring wireless activity inside and out of the enterprise
* Classifying WLAN transmissions into harmful and harmless
* Preventing transmissions that pose a security threat to the enterprise network
* Locating participating devices for physical remediation
Effectively address data protection challenges, implementing solutions that help store and protect business–critical data while cutting costs and improving efficiency and reliability.
Download now »
Sign up to receive Applications Resource Alerts
Recommend This
