Layer 7 Technologies, otherwise known as the XML firewall player left standing after a couple of its chief rivals were swallowed up by IBM and Cisco, now is introducing a solution for IBM mainframes that it claims it more streamlined than what IBM offers.
Its SecureSpan Mainframe SOA gateway performs a variety of tasks related to define, model, secure, and deploy web services from mainframe sources. While its appliance doesn't perform anything that IBM’s own DataPower appliances, don’t do, Layer 7 claims to deliver all the functions in a single integrated box without needing IBM’s WebSphere MQ and its various connectors (adapters) to CICS, IMS, DB2, or other legacy sources.In fact, Layer 7 claims it’s the only XML appliance-based mainframe SOA gateway that supports IMS (conversational and non-conversational), CICS BMS and COMMAREA applications, Link3270, TN3270, and sequential file access.
Layer 7’s product address an obvious sweet spot: exposing of mainframe interactions as web services, and moving compute-intensive processing off the mainframe. The appeal of both ideas is obvious.
- Secondly, by migrating XML processing, which is extremely compute-intensive, from the mainframe to an appliance is a great cost reducer because you avoid having to pay for all those expensive MIPS.
There are numerous middleware providers offering tools for exposing mainframe transactions as web services, with approaches ranging from drilling down to transaction level to others that emulate navigation of 3270 screen sessions. Layer 7 is partnering with GT Software for its Ivory Service Architect tool, which offers a visual development environment for transforming mainframe transactions into web services, and then testing the new web service connections.
Later this year, Layer 7 plans to add support for managing multiple clusters of SecureSpan appliances (it already supports individual clusters), that could be applied to geographically distributed installations or for outsourcers offering multi-tenanted mainframe SOA hosting services. It is also planning to add governance measures that tie in SOA policy enforcement into the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
