SOA Software announced the release of SOLA 6.0 (Service Oriented Legacy Architecture), a major update to its mainframe SOA Solution.

SOLA is a complete mainframe Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) solution. SOLA solves today's most critical problem, making mainframe applications part of an SOA, in a cost-effective manner. SOLA provides customers with a process to expose mainframe applications as secure Web Services, and allows mainframe applications to consume Web Services. Using SOLA, customers can leverage billions of dollars of existing mainframe investments when building an enterprise SOA. The SOLA runtime environment runs entirely on the mainframe, eliminating the need for expensive, unreliable and unnecessary middleware. This, coupled with SOLA's Development Studio, increases developer productivity, providing faster time to market and lower application development cost.

SOLA eliminates the need to integrate multiple mainframe and distributed products/platforms to create an enterprise class SOA. Unlike alternative solutions that only offer one or two components of mainframe SOA, SOLA offers a complete SOA solution further reducing TCO.

SOLA's high-performance and low CPU overhead enable customers to run mainframe SOA implementations in the most cost effective manner.

Innovative SOLA features such as One-Click service creation and an easy to use drag-and-drop interface deliver the only secure, standards-based and governable SOA product in the mainframe industry. SOLA provides mainframe end-to-end governance with WS-Security, WS-Policy, mainframe optimized registry, integrated monitoring, logging, auditing and near limitless scalability, all implemented on the mainframe. This makes SOLA the only solution for companies seeking secure, high-volume, mission-critical mainframe SOA.

SOLA Advantages for mainframe SOA

• Most comprehensive mainframe SOA solution on the market
• Production proven track record in the Fortune 1000
• Lowest TCO (and highest ROI) in the industry
• SOLA is a Governed Service Platform, making it fully governable by SOA Software products like Workbench and Service Manager
• Standards-based, enterprise SOA ready
• One Click Web Services
• BPEL support enhances efficiency of complex operations.
• No workstation software to install
• Centralized directory
• Mainframe operates as a server or as a client

"We have a long established tradition of segment leading technology and innovation," said Jim Crew, SOLA co-creator and Vice President of SOA Software. "We were the first to offer production mainframe Web Services, the first to implement WS-Security and the first to deliver the most complete mainframe SOA product."

New features and benefits of SOLA 6.0

• More powerful Web 2.0 SOLA Development Studio with intuitive drag-and-drop capabilities
• BPEL support provides orchestration of Services, allowing customers to combine Services into composite Services.
• Enhanced customization (environments, access controls, etc.) allows SOLA to adapt to customers' environments.
• Improved performance through enhanced database and parser algorithms increase efficiency and boost ROI.
• Improved security such as identity mapping, SAML 2.0 authentication, XACML authorization, multiple certificates and TLS provide improve security to a product that already possesses the segment's strongest and most efficient security.
• Multiple container and pipeline support boost performance and efficiency by taking advantage of architectural improvements of IBM's CICS TS.
• Enhanced management and administrative capability provide added flexibility, security and control.