SOLA runs the world's largest mainframe SOA implementations. A number ofSOLA customers use it to run many millions of mainframe web servicestransactions per day, and many customers' plans anticipate volume in the20-30 million transactions per day range.

"Today marks five successful years of 100% availability, high volumeproduction web services for our product. SOLA was the first product todeploy production mainframe web services and it has the best track recordof any mainframe SOA solution," said Jim Crew, SOLA co-creator and VicePresident of SOA Software. "SOLA handles tens of millions of securetransactions every day and has never caused a production outage."

SOLA is an enterprise-class mainframe web services solution that seamlesslyintegrates the mainframe into a Service Oriented Architecture, withend-to-end governance and unlimited scalability. With its run-time runningexclusively on the mainframe, SOLA has proven to be an attractive solutionfor firms seeking secure, available, high-volume, mission criticalmainframe integration with high performance and low CPU overhead.

SOLA owes its success in no small part to Merrill Lynch, where the product(then called X4ML) was created based on a set of uncompromisingrequirements for an enterprise-class mainframe web services solution and alack of adequate solutions available in the market. "SOLA has allowed usto simplify and modernize our environment, while allowing us to eliminatecomplex and expensive gateway servers," said Henry Tsang, Vice President ofMerrill Lynch. "What sets SOLA apart is that it offers integratedmonitoring, logging, auditing, WS-Security and WS-Policy on the mainframe,all of which benefit from the mainframe's performance, reliability andscalability while offering end-to-end transaction visibility."

SOLA implements the entire SOAP stack on the mainframe, inheriting themainframe platform's legendary speed, reliability, scalability andmanageability. SOLA keeps overhead to a minimum by implementing much ofthe SOAP stack in assembler. Customers report that SOLA adds around 2milliseconds elapsed time to a transaction. The 2 milliseconds includesthe complete SOAP stack, authentication, authorization, monitoring and SLAenforcement. SOLA's efficiency is an important competitive differentiator;other products can add 100 milliseconds or more to a transaction.

No Last-Mile Security Issues

Running the SOAP stack on the mainframe offers significant advantages overcompetitors who run their processing on middle-tier gateways. For example,SOLA's standards based implementation of WS-Security and WS-Policy runsentirely on the mainframe using the integrated cryptographic coprocessorsavailable on the zSeries. This contrasts with other mainframe web servicesimplementations which rely on partner products for security. Thoseproducts run on middle-tier gateways, exposing customer transactions to"last-mile" security vulnerabilities.

No Java on the Mainframe

SOLA's assembler language SOAP stack implementation is so efficient thatthere's only a small overhead when publishing a mainframe program as afully secured, managed, monitored and governed Web Service. SOLA's fullycompliant DOM parser uses less general purpose CPU than an equivalent Javaparser running on a zAAP -- while taking less than 5% of the elapsed time.This makes SOLA more efficient and much faster than products which use Javarunning on a zAAP to parse XML.

Less Complex

Because SOLA offers a complete SOA solution there is no requirement tointegrate multiple products when building an enterprise-class SOAincorporating the mainframe. SOLA includes a "drag-and-drop" graphicaldevelopment studio, an integrated UDDI registry, WS-Security, WS-Policy,monitoring, logging, a management console and dashboard, SLA management,BPEL, SAML, X509 Certificates, LDAP and Active Directory. SOLA'seliminates the complexity and expense of combining multiple products, suchas CICS TS 3.x, WebSphere and RAD.

Closed-Loop Governance Automation

SOLA is the only mainframe SOA product to offer closed-loop Governanceautomation. A service is automatically governed from the point of creationbecause it inherits a security policy. Policy, by means ofWS-PolicyAttachment, is associated with the service though all phases ofthe Software Development Lifecycle. It is not possible to create or run anungoverned service.

Other features of SOLA include integration with enterprise changemanagement, Global Dictionary, Logging, Auditing, Outbound SOAP requests,Batch support, Integration with external UDDI, version control, support forthe Software Development Lifecycle, WSDL first and integration with SOAManagement tools, making SOLA the only secure, standards-based, andGovernable product in the space.

SOLA also offers XACML for authentication and a comprehensive identitymapping system that allows for the mapping of any credential (LDAP, etc) toa mainframe RACF ID.

About SOA Software

SOA Software is a leading provider of comprehensive, enterprise-class SOAGovernance and Legacy integration solutions. SOA Software products providea comprehensive closed-loop SOA Governance solution (Workbench), ahigh-performance, scalable SOA security, mediation, and management solution(Service Manager), and a mainframe Web services solution (SOLA). SOASoftware products process over 500 million mission critical transactions amonth and are used by the largest Fortune 1000 corporations, includingMerrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Verizon, and Pfizer. For more information,please visit http://www.soa.com.

SOA Software, Workbench, Service Manager, and SOLA are trademarks of SOASoftware, Inc. All other product and company names herein may betrademarks and/or registered trademarks of their registered owners.

Media ContactsLisa BlankDirector, Marketing CommunicationsSOA SoftwareTel: (310) 570-4104 or (310) 570-4162Email Contact