Ascential rolls out integration suite

Ascential Software on Monday is rolling out a new version of its flagship integration suite that leverages a SOA (service-oriented architecture) that is designed to help enterprise users improve the value of their more analytic applications by changing the way data integration is addressed.

Version 7.0 of the company’s Enterprise Integration Suite in concert with its Real Time Integration Services (RTI) work to extend the reach of the products’ data profiling, data transformation, parallel processing, meta data, and connectivity capabilities, company officials claim.

“By leveraging the benefits of a service-oriented architecture we think users can better integrate data across all strategic enterprise and analytic applications like business process management, CRM, ERP, and supply chain management on the fly. I think we can make data integration pervasive and ease concerns about data sources, quality, volumes, and latency,” said Pete Fiore, Ascential’s president.

Some analysts gave the new suite a thumbs-up, citing the effective use of a SOA, which is becoming more and more fashionable among developers over the past year.

“[Ascential is] leveraging the capabilities of a service-oriented architecture for data integration, exposing critical metadata and robust mapping that could ultimately be applied in a business process context. The Integration Suite coupled with Real-Time Integration Services is targeted at businesses striving to capture and act on mission-critical information in an event-driven manner,” said Sandra Rogers, program director of Web services and integration software at IDC, in Framingham, Mass. “They are placing an emphasis on the delivery of complete synchronized, harmonized data where and when it’s needed,” she said.

Some of the improvements made in Version 7.0 of the suite include suite-wide GUI enhancements along with Intelligent Assistants that automate standards and pre-packaged tasks designed to increase productivity and accelerate time to market. Also, Complete National Language Support throughout the suite using Unicode is designed to deliver data transparency across multiple environments. Support for a broader range of operating systems is featured, including backing for IBM’s z/OS Unix Systems Services, and improved support for Red Hat’s version of Linux.

The updated suite also contains improved security and an open Web services-based enterprise management interface intended to help streamline mission-critical enterprise data integration deployments.

Corporate developers can also create a single set of data transformation rules, a company spokesman said.