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Enterprise IT's 'Moment of Truth' has arrived, according to Sandy Zylka, a co-founder of NextAxiom and the co-inventor of the company's seven patent-pending innovations. Zylka, who participates in consulting services to NextAxiom customers as a Principal SOA Architect, unveils in this interview with SOAWorld Magazine NextAxiom's concept of its platform as being akin to 'Next-Generation Middleware on Tap.'


SOAWorld Magazine: What does NextAxiom do/provide?

Sandy Zylka: We provide an alternative to middleware for building composite applications and integration solutions. Middleware today is far too complex and naturally results in complex applications… and our industry keeps adding more and more moving parts just to move us an inch further. This is a sign that the current middleware approach has reached its limit.

Think about the complexity of middleware: to run integrated business applications today, you need an application server, integration server, rules engine, message broker, event broker, ESB, workflow engine, data transfer and transformation engine, process server, BPM engine, BPEL engine, service governance and management, metadata management & repository, caching & cache management… and the list goes on and on. And with all these tools, you still have to take the core of your business and application logic and lock it in Java or C# code.

NextAxiom gives you a different kind of platform to build integrated solutions without all of that middleware complexity. When you think of NextAxiom think of “SOA inside” rather than “SOA on top but inflexible concrete inside.”

SOAWorld Magazine: How were you able to reduce complexity  –  What’s the secret sauce? 

Sandy Zylka: The core difference starts with “SOA inside”: we grabbed service-orientation and took it in-memory.  Then we used that as a foundation for building model-driven software modules.  We optimized the platform so that those model-driven modules would outperform hand-coded components in an app server.            

This in-memory service-orientation, combined with SOA standards for going across systems, gives us a new way of integrating. We call it “inside-out integration.” This is brokerless integration that becomes inherently part of your software solution, rather than an afterthought.  Because it’s already model-driven, it eliminates the need for all those 10’s of niche, model-driven productivity tools that run on top of today’s app servers. So you have a single orientation and a single concept that can do what otherwise would require a slew of moving middleware parts, and it can do it 10x better.  And the best part is that you get well-designed SOA automatically.  SOA is no longer a destination or a journey – it’s just a by-product of this approach.

SOAWorld Magazine: Is this “PowerPoint theory” or is it real? 

Sandy Zylka: We have developed this platform under the radar during the past 8 years.  It was first deployed in 2002 at Eastman Chemical.  It is now deployed in over 7 countries, and is robust enough to be used by some of the largest energy & utility companies in the world.  And believe me, utility companies don’t run their business on PowerPoint.

SOAWorld Magazine: So, you eliminate the need for middleware, but what if I’ve already invested a lot in middleware? 

Sandy Zylka: Because of its pure service-orientation and “SOA inside” characteristic, the NextAxiom platform can leverage all of your software assets including what you have built on your middleware, or it can simply outsource some of the work to other tools that you are already acquainted with. So, it’s not an all-or-none value proposition.

The question is, moving forward, do you want to continue spending $4 in solution for every dollar you spend in middleware to deliver your new solutions, or do you want to spend one dollar on solution for each dollar in platform? We are talking about a 60% reduction in Total Cost of Ownership and a significant difference in responsiveness to change. You have an incremental path to adopting this platform. Start with a single situational or composite application, and leverage all of your existing software assets… including your middleware.  Once you are comfortable with the platform consider the economics of your solutions moving forward.