As growing numbers of organisations adopt a software strategy based around Web services, the need to manage this will become more pressing.
That is what one Irish company is betting on. Dublin-based WestGlobal is going after a market where there are two main challenges – evaluating and managing the Web services infrastructure and individual Web services themselves.
The company takes the view that once software is designated as a service it becomes a business resource and it needs to be managed as such.
‘It’s about having accurate information about business assets,’ explained Michael Duffy, vice president of marketing. ‘Why Web services management? Because performance in and of its own right is key; IT departments are measured on that.’
Other selling points for implementing Web services management include reducing total cost of ownership by rationalising software components that are unnecessary. Organisations can align their IT systems with their business objectives.
‘Our sale is to the CIO or business analyst,’ said Duffy. WestGlobal claims to be the only European company focused on Web services management.
WestGlobal was founded in May 2000 and has a headcount of 15 people at its offices in Dublin’s IFSC. It also has US offices in Atlanta and San Francisco.
Until now, the company had been focusing purely on development but since earlier this year it has begun making its flagship product mScape widely available across a series of platforms including Corba and Sun One.
The first version of mScape, released last year, was designed to show Web services performance in real time and demonstrate the dependencies between different parts of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. Using the system, it is possible to identify who is requesting each Web service, deliver Web services over any protocol and alter the behaviour of Web service delivery.
By using mScape, organisations can see whether they are getting the best return on their IT investment, using their existing resources optimally, in addition to measuring and managing business performance.
This management function is also centralised on a dashboard-style console interface. ‘You get an understanding of who is looking for what, from where and how often,’ said Duffy. ‘If something is underperforming, a business can say “we need to clone this [software component] or add a second server”.’
mScape also allows organisations to check whether software components are duplicated within an organisation. If more than one component is fulfilling the same function, the redundant piece of software can be eliminated, potentially saving the organisation the cost of maintaining the additional component.
Earlier this year, WestGlobal released mScape version 2.0 which has a number of new features including enhanced business activity monitoring, performance management, revenue management and advanced service request prioritisation.
Business activity monitoring, a term coined by Gartner, is now a top issue for CIOs, Duffy maintains.
16/01/2003
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