INDUSTRY

Move Highlights BRMS Benefits for Service-Oriented Architectures to Drive Agility: ILOG, a Business Rule Management System (BRMS) vendor, today announced its acceptance into the IBM SOA Specialty Program after successfully completing IBM's extensive service-oriented architecture (SOA) technical and business requirements. With this achievement, ILOG has integrated its JRules BRMS seamlessly with the IBM SOA Foundation, a single, integrated platform that combines the industry's top application server and integration capabilities. The SOA Specialty, part of the IBM PartnerWorld program, provides technical enablement and a skills-building roadmap for partners who want to access the growing SOA market opportunity. Increasingly, business applications require tremendous flexibility to adapt to changing customer demands, regulatory requirements, company policies and competition. SOA provides this flexibility through the facilitation and re-use of application components. Without re-use of services, the proliferation of redundant services can result, increasing the cost and time required to implement even minor changes required by the business environment. The ILOG JRules BRMS enables businesses to create decision services that are truly reusable, owned by business users, easy to adapt, and that contribute to an enterprise compliance strategy -- what ILOG refers to as "Transparent Decision Services." The services are transparent as a BRMS provides easy access to the rules in the decision service to all the participants of its lifecycle: developers, integration developers, service owners and policy managers -- eliminating the "black box" created using standard software coding practices, such as Java and C#. ILOG's BRMS further enhances the reuse value proposition of SOA because it now offers the closest integration available with a leading SOA platform, speeding the adoption of Transparent Decision Services. "For many industries, a BRMS is an essential component of a successful SOA strategy," said Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA and WebSphere Strategy, IBM Software Group. "ILOG's membership in our SOA Specialty ensures that our customers can integrate ILOG JRules technology into the IBM SOA framework with minimal effort and risk." "IBM is leading the industry in SOA initiatives today and ILOG is proud to be a part of the SOA Specialty program. ILOG has long supported the IBM WebSphere platform, but IBM SOA platform support brings our integrated offerings to a new level of accessibility by customers of all sizes," said Desmond DeLandro, Vice President, Strategic Alliances, ILOG. "In addition to significant IT cost savings, reduced resource and time investment typically associated with a combined business process management and business rule solutions, our joint customers can now see increased business benefits. We are committed to making the SOA Specialty program a success, and to grow and expand the deep sales and technical relationship we share with IBM." In addition to today's achievement, ILOG JRules was the first BRMS to be integrated with the IBM WebSphere Process Server, a key element of IBM's SOA offering. ILOG JRules extends the WebSphere business integration platform, offering enterprise rule repositories, decision tree support, template editors, web-based management tools and rule simulation and testing. ILOG's validation into IBM's SOA framework allows organizations to immediately benefit from an out-of-the-box integration with full reuse of rule services such as eligibility, risk assessment, and pricing. Industries as diverse as insurance, banking and public sector can benefit from an integrated IBM and ILOG solution built on an SOA framework. The combined capabilities of the two partners will enable insurance companies to add unprecedented flexibility and manageability to underwriting and claims processes; allow banks and financial institutions to adapt their lending systems as the market demands and help government agencies reduce costs by making benefits administration systems easier to maintain.