Published: 1 September 2008

A recent Gartner Research Note deals with the problem of the development and use of reliable, service-oriented, composite applications. The problem Gartner identifies is that in a service-oriented architecture it is difficult to guarantee process integrity, defining process integrity as “the degree to which all process elements – tasks, users, systems information, and so forth – are intact and functioning in ways that ensure sustainability and long-term adaptation to changing conditions and human uses”. The research note goes on to say that in the past, process integrity was built into monolithic applications that controlled business processes from start to finish – but at the expense of IT flexibility and business agility. The main concern is that “Through 2010, SOA SaaS, BPO and business application implementation projects that don’t make process integrity an integral part of the process design and implementation will fail to deliver the expected results”. The proposed solution is that in service-oriented and composite application environments, software developers must be able to manage process integrity outside of the services or other business logic being composed into the total solution.

The report is available as part of Intersystem’s most recent newsletter, which also points out that its Ensemble rapid integration and development platform is up to the task as it provides such control when developing, deploying, and managing service-oriented, composite applications. Ensemble’s embedded database, and unified architecture, allows developers to create composite applications without having to trade speed of development for business process integrity. It gives organisations the capability to proceed with projects that can provide the flexibility, rapid time-to-solution, and business agility they want.

Ensemble was positioned in the ‘leaders’ quadrant of Gartner’s ‘magic quadrant’ for application infrastructure for composite-application projects 2Q07 report.

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