E-mail is extremely easy to adopt and use, and lends itself very well to certain types of collaboration. When two people are attempting to collaborate asynchronously, e-mail is usually the best solution. It's certainly far less frustrating than phone tag. But once more people are involved, email's utility rapidly degenerates. While the rise of free, open-source solutions makes it tempting to build one's own collaboration tools, on-demand or Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions are the better choice for the majority of users and uses.

Two of the biggest launches in Rich Internet Application history took place in 2007/2008 when Adobe launched AIR 1.0 in February '08 and Microsoft launched Silverlight (September '07). At the 6th International AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo in October SYS-CON Events is delighted to be presenting major industry keynotes from the two industry executives with overall responsibility for both of those massive richer-web initiatives: Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch and Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform.

Virtualization has quickly become a staple new concept for enterprise IT. At SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo, held at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, June 23-24, we had exceptional speakers with high-quality use cases not only of how virtualization maximizes the use of resources and thus saves companies money, but also of how it is fundamentally altering the way that businesses run IT. The two content-packed days emphasized value with a rich array of sessions about the business and technical value of virtualization.

Elixir Technology provides Integrated Business Intelligence with Elixir Repertoire - a product for Dashboard, Reporting, Data ETL and Scheduling. Supporting 'Web 2.0' with RESTful Web Services architectural approach on SOA, Elixir Repertoire aims to power the new generation enterprise applications with Business Intelligence that is simplified yet powerful, feature-rich yet affordable. With over 600 customers across 50 countries already using its enterprise reporting feature, Elixir Repertoire completes the entire Business Intelligence cycle to realize the full return of investment.

Legacy systems typically contain the most critical information in an enterprise, and many organizations have more than one type of legacy platform. LegaSuite Integration is a middleware tool to simplify and accelerate integration of all types legacy data, business logic and screens with Web applications and SOA tools such as ESB and BPM suites.

AmberPoint announced a new program to recruit and support leading systems integrators. The AmberPoint Systems Integrator Alliance Program provides the tools systems integrators need in order to implement reliable and manageable SOA-enabled systems with AmberPoint's runtime SOA governance solutions.

MEGA International announced that Cox Enterprises is using the MEGA Modeling Suite for its enterprise architecture and business process modeling program. Cox Enterprises is a media company with more than 80,000 employees in 300 companies. Major operating subsidiaries include Cox Communications, Cox Newspapers, Cox Television, Cox Radio, and Cox Auto Trader.

LISA Virtualize (formerly LISA Virtual Service Environment) allows teams to decouple themselves from dependency on live or unfinished systems and components throughout the lifecycle of building and testing SOA applications. LISA Virtualize models the expected functionality of any Service within SOA applications, whether that is a Web Service (WSDL), an integration layer such as an ESB, or an implementation layer such as an EJB, mainframe or database, and represents that Service virtually, with a high level of dynamic input and output capabilities and performance characteristics that simulate the real-world behaviors of complex systems. A Virtual Environment instance in LISA saves the team more than 90% of the cost of producing a replicated environment by other means, and allows teams to work in parallel instead of being constrained by each other's lifecycles, which increases agility and quality.

Progress Software has acquired Mindreef, a provider of SOA service validation and testing tools. Mindreef will be fully integrated into Progress Software, and will adopt the Progress Software company name. Progress expects to retain most Mindreef product names, however, this will be reviewed over the months following the acquisition.

Ivory Service Architect is the centerpiece of the Ivory mainframe SOA solution, instantly turning mainframe developers into service developers for rapid mainframe SOA development. With Ivory Service Architect, developers can create and publish Web services, developing right-sized composite business services from existing mainframe assets with little or no training, and no consulting required. Ivory Service Architect consists of: Ivory Studio - graphical modeling environment; and Ivory Server - high performance SOAP processor with runtime service orchestration & WSDL repository.

MuleSource announced general availability of Mule Galaxy Enterprise, a new production-ready solution for storing and managing SOA artifacts offering new enterprise-class features such as clustering for high availability, an extensible query engine, and more. Mule Galaxy Enterprise, the open source SOA governance platform with integrated registry and repository, builds on the success of the Mule Galaxy Community Edition, released in January 2008.

FusionVm SaaS from Critical Watch enables organizations to reduce risk and sustain compliance by automating Vulnerability Management and Security Configuration Policy Compliance through an on-demand service. Using this subscription-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), you log into a secure Web portal and profile your asset inventory, set risk and configuration policies, view a variety of risk and compliance reports and track remediation progress. Easily deployable, FusionVM SaaS allows you to begin the risk and compliance management process with minimal effort.

SOA Software is a company that offers a complete Integrated SOA Governance Automation solution addressing SOA security and management together with Legacy and B2B Web services requirements. SOA Software?s Repository Manager, Policy Manager, and Service Manager combine to form a comprehensive Integrated SOA Governance Automation solution, with SOLA providing a governable Mainframe SOA platform.

Methodologies Corporation announced the release of SOMF version 1.1. The advanced edition is based on recent book publication entitled 'Service-Oriented Modeling: Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture', written by Michael Bell and produced by Wiley & Sons Inc. in March, 2008.

There are many forces that influence technological evolution. After a decade of building enterprise applications on the web, today's enterprise application platform is slowly evolving to the next generation application platform. What exactly are the components of this next superplatform? OSGi is poised to surface as the core component model of the next-generation Java platform.

ParAccel and Pentaho announced a partnership to deliver a high performance, integrated database platform and BI environment for analytic applications. The integration of the ParAccel Analytic Database and Pentaho's comprehensive BI suite will provide organizations with a cost-effective, end-to-end solution for analyzing and reporting on business-critical information at record-breaking speeds, leading to faster and more optimized decision-making.

AccuRev and Rally announced a technology partnership that will integrate AccuRev software change and configuration management (SCCM) with Rally's Agile lifecycle management solutions. The combined solution will provide a platform to manage multiple Agile processes and ongoing customer feedback, while improving visibility and requirements traceability between defects, issues and tasks and the actual source code changes made to address them.

Progress Software and IONA Technologies have jointly announced that they have signed a definitive agreement under which Progress Software has agreed to acquire IONA for $4.05 per share in cash. This represents a total equity value of approximately $162 million and approximately $106 million net of cash and marketable securities reported on March 31, 2008.

webMethods BPMS, v.7.1 is a full-feature process design, execution, monitoring and management solution. Using an intuitive, easy-to-use design interface, business analysts and developers can collaboratively model, implement, automate, monitor and improve end-to-end business processes. Key features of webMethods BPMS include patented business activity monitoring (BAM), embedded simulation, advanced human workflow, a comprehensive metadata repository, integrated business rules management and composite application development.

The SecureSpan XML Networking Gateway combines the capabilities of the SecureSpan XML Accelerator, XML Data Screen and XML Firewall and VPN with advanced message routing, mediation, virtualization and SLA features to address generalized Application Oriented Networking (AON) problems. Deployed either as a hardware accelerated appliance or gateway software, the SecureSpan XML Networking Gateway provides SOA and integration architects flexible policy based control for scalable mediating service interactions across message oriented middlewares, protocols, service versions and XML data formats. Through integration with leading registry products, the SecureSpan Networking Gateway can be also be implemented as a high performance runtime policy enforcement point for SOA Governance initiatives.

Rational Functional Tester is an automated, functional testing and regression testing tool. It provides testers with automated testing capabilities for functional testing, regression testing, GUI testing and data-driven testing. It provides testers with automated capabilities for data-driven and keyword testing.

Progress Sonic ESB 7.5 is the latest version of Progress Software's enterprise service bus (ESB) that enables the integration and flexible re-use of business applications within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Progress Software customers benefit from the following key characteristics of Sonic ESB: Sonic ESB has an unstoppable messaging backbone that provides continuous availability right out of the box. Sonic ESB allows customers to configure, update and manage their distributed SOA infrastructure from a single console located anywhere on the network. The Sonic ESB lightweight, zero-cost container works in a heterogeneous environment - no application servers are required or embedded.

The IBM SOA Sandbox lets you increase your SOA skills through practical, hands-on experience with the IBM SOA entry points. These SOA entry points -- people, process, information, reuse, and connectivity -- are based upon real customer experiences and provide a simple way to get started with SOA. The SOA Sandbox makes it easy to learn about these entry points by providing a low-risk 'tinker, test, and try' learning environment that's designed for enterprise architects, integration developers, and Web developers, but available to everyone.

WSO2 announced the availability of the open source WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Version 1.7 to support enterprises' heterogeneous, high-volume service-oriented architecture (SOA) demands. The WSO2 ESB 1.7 offers enhancements to stability, scalability and availability - resulting in incredible scalability and error-free connections for high-volume SOA environments, even on standard hardware. Version 1.7 of the WSO2 ESB now integrates closely with the integrated, full-featured WSO2 Registry 1.1 for true, enterprise-class SOA governance.

It's important to remember that there is a huge resource being created on the Web these days in terms of both services and content. This includes access to SaaS applications (that are better than their enterprise-bound counterparts), service marketplaces, and even mash-able applications that you can mix and match with other Web 2.0 applications / APIs / services or enterprise applications / services to quickly solve business problems.

Melding a stable enterprise architecture with the right level of technical and organization transparency involves two different perspectives, said Johan Nordin, CIO and member of Volvofinans Executive Leading Group. Nordin presented his session at the 13th International SOA World Conference & Expo, held at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC.

Software AG's Vice President and Deputy CTO Miko Matsumura discussed the boundaries between the Enterprise and the Internet at the SOA World Conference & Expo. He focused on Architectual approaches from the service pattern, process pattern and event pattern to help SOA practitioners understand topics such as Web 2.0, AJAX, SaaS, Social Networks and how they connect with the Enterprise.

WSO2 has today announced the availability of the open source WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Version 1.7 to support enterprises' heterogeneous, high-volume service-oriented architecture (SOA) demands. The WSO2 ESB 1.7 offers new enhancements to stability and availability - resulting in scalability and error-free connections for high-volume SOA environments, even on standard hardware.

WSO2 has announced the availability of the open source WSO2 Registry, version 1.1. The WSO2 Registry 1.1 adds comprehensive, out-of-the-box, service-oriented architecture (SOA) lifecycle management. Version 1.1 also includes new features for allowing users to encode their own custom governance rules and policies, as well as validation to ensure that services match corporate industry interoperability standards.

If governance were a house, you would be left with the options of either building it from the ground-up or attempting to haul a complete house in on a large truck. While the latter is possible, it is fraught with difficulty. The house does not lend itself well to transport. It may become damaged during the move. It may not fit on your lot or connect smoothly to your utilities, requiring modifications to be made on the spot.

In this presentation we will look at some examples of leveraging JBoss product suite in Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture implementations. We will examine real-life case studies to clearly understand the full lifecycle of an Enterprise SOA, as well as what it takes to have the 'Practical SOA' approach.

These days nearly every sizable organization has either implemented some form of SOA or has it on their roadmap. They quickly find that SOA efforts tend to expand like spider webs, eventually touching every corner of IT as well as the business itself. Due to the vital role that data plays both in business and systems operations, database architects, information specialists, data integration experts, and anyone responsible for data persistence in an organization are increasingly being called on to contribute to their organization's SOA initiatives - whether or not this was intended at the onset.

DataDirect Technologies will present 'Frontiers in Data Access: The Coming Wave in Data Services,' at the first-ever DataServices World, co-located with the 13th Annual International SOA World Conference and Expo 2008 East, June 24 at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

Dramatic industry changes - including vendor consolidation, outsourcing and the growth of open source - highlight the need for a better way. When a SOA implementation costs too much, the culprit is often the old-fashioned, proprietary and expensive server or hub-based middleware. A better, distributed approach to SOA infrastructure can help reduce cost and increase the benefit of SOA implementation. This presentation includes an overview of the industry trends driving us toward SOA and explains why traditional middleware systems do not meet modern requirements as well as a distributed approach to SOA infrastructure.

Senior technical executives at WSO2, the open source SOA company, will be featured speakers at the 13th Annual SOA World Conference & Expo East, where they will discuss service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance and the role of SOA in a more flexible enterprise. A silver sponsor of SOA World, WSO2 also will demonstrate two new SOA product releases being launched in conjunction with the show. SOA World is being held June 23-24, 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, NY.

ActiveVOS is a complete, integrated, standards-based visual orchestration system. With ActiveVOS, your project teams and individual developers working in a web services environment can create SOA applications in ways never before possible.

Melding a stable enterprise architecture with the right level of technical and organization transparency involves two different perspectives. An architect can lay a SOA foundation that enables development teams to build new functionality leveraging Web Services. However, without a librarian's perspective, the interaction between service providers and consumers sharing SOA assets can lead to your SOA projects stagnating. In this session, you?ll learn how Volvofinans brought together these two perspectives to accelerate SOA adoption.

Atos Origin and Cordys have signed a worldwide alliance to jointly offer innovative state-of-the-art BPM solutions. The companies will collaborate on the implementation of joint market offerings; using the Cordys Business Process Management Suite (BPMS), in conjunction with a range of consulting, systems integration, application management and managed operation services from Atos Origin.

This session will illustrate how service-orientation brings about the ability for organizations to see changes in business processes reflected quickly in their business systems by discussing real-world applications of SOA as applied to supply-chain management.

Managed Methods develops and sells versatile and cost-effective solutions products for monitoring Web services and managing service-oriented architectures. Their focus is providing practical tools that enable visibility and management of Web services operations in the production environment. As an organization, Managed Methods offers the following value: IT Operations Monitoring Experience, Focus on Product Flexibility and Value, Customization, Customer-driven and Flexible Licensing.