Tibco will use virtualization for SOA deployments

It’s virtualization to the rescue again -- this time with large-scale SOA deployments.

Tibco Software on Monday launched Tibco ActiveMatrix, a service virtualization platform to help enterprises deal with SOA as deployments grow larger. The new platform includes a service grid, policy management software, and a UDDI-based registry, derived from Tibco’s Project Matrix initiative.

“With SOA, the challenges that companies are facing are really around the deployment, management, and ultimately the virtualization of services,” Matthew Quinn, vice president of product strategy at Tibco, said. “If you have two services, you know where those services are and what platform they’re built on. If you have 500 to 1,000 services, you lose a lot of that control.”

ActiveMatrix provides foundation technology for deploying an SOA. Virtualization enables communication with vast numbers of services without having to know what machine they exist on or what type of software container they use. Governance is enhanced because service and policy configuration and management are done centrally for each application server, enterprise service bus or orchestration engine, Tibco said.

A centerpiece of the rollout is Tibco ActiveMatrix Service Grid. It serves as a distributed platform for deployment and managing Java, .Net and other services as composite applications.

ActiveMatrix provides an integrated vision for application and integration platforms, builds in virtualization layers and addresses composite application programming, said analyst Randy Heffner of Forrester Research. The product also makes the protocols used in an SOA transparent, Heffner said.

The three products are available now. Prices for a single product start at about $40,000. Tibco plans to expand its ActiveMatrix product line next year, though company officials declined to provide specifics.