AmberPoint announced that it has extended the reach of its runtime SOA governance software to include enterprise applications from software vendors and Software as a Service (SaaS) providers. SOA-based systems are heterogeneous composite applications that often include packaged applications—such as customer relationship management (CRM) suites, order management systems and billing systems—as well as hosted applications that are provided on demand. Through its non-invasive SOA runtime governance technology, AmberPoint is able to monitor these prominent participants in SOA systems. The initial set of supported applications includes leading solutions for the telecommunications industry, such as:

• Amdocs CRM
• Amdocs Order Management System (OMS)
• NetCracker Operations Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS) software
• Software as a Service (Saas) applications

“Achieving end-to-end SOA visibility requires insight into the SaaS and packaged applications that are increasingly becoming part of SOA deployments,” said Julie Craig, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Management Associates. “Visibility into these applications provides insight into the business impact of problems with SOA services. Transaction fallout, for example, can negatively impact customer satisfaction and customer retention. AmberPoint’s support for packaged applications helps organizations using SOA to better exploit the real business value of these systems.”

Most SOA deployments extend well beyond just Web services and, in many cases, contain no Web service-based components at all. Solutions that manage only Web services fall well short of the requirements of today’s SOA environments. AmberPoint is able to monitor and manage SOA application components without requiring modifications to the application source code or to message headers, which can cause dependent applications to break.

AmberPoint provides visibility into virtually any type of component, including hardware appliances, transport protocols, and home-grown solutions. AmberPoint provides true end-to-end SOA visibility by delivering information on dependencies, performance, service levels and exceptions. In addition to ensuring the health of SOA composite applications and their constituent components, AmberPoint monitors and manages transactions flowing across increasingly complex heterogeneous systems.

In related news, AmberPoint also announced new capabilities for managing the transactions flowing across SOA systems.

”In large part, the challenge of achieving end-to-end management is an integration issue,” explained Gordon Loudon, AmberPoint’s vice president of Customer Experience. “Packaged and SaaS applications play a large role in many of our customer’s SOA systems. Our unique ability to bring instrumentation to these integral components is helping our customers elevate the business value of their systems by managing transactions across their complete SOA environments.”