Software AG, headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, provides a full range of products and services to deliver a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) IT infrastructure, based on over thirty-five years experience in high-performance databases, application development tools and integration technologies.

Software AG helps its customers to achieve a competitive advantage through flexible and adaptive business processes based on fast and easy integration of existing IT assets. It supports the mission-critical systems of over 3,000 customers globally.

Software AG is represented in around 60 countries with more than 2,600 employees. It is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE 0003304002 / SOW). In 2004 Software AG posted €411 million in total revenue.

crossvision is Software AG's latest SOA-oriented integration offering.

Joe Gentry, a BIG IRON fan club member, gives us an exclusive, in-depth look at this new offering -- in this interview with Anura Guruge, IT In-Depth's editor at large.

Joe gentry: a synopsis

Joe Gentry has more than 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, product management and software development. As Vice President of Software AG's Enterprise Transaction Systems Business Line, Joe is responsible for creating the vision and delivering customer value through optimizing and extending mission-critical systems with technologies that enhance performance and open applications to new environments such as the Web and e-business applications. Thanks to Joe's work with the Enterprise Transaction Systems product line, Software AG has reached a key position at some 3,000 large corporations and public sector organizations worldwide. These enterprises protect their IT investment by looking to Software AG as the partner of choice for legacy modernization.

Prior to joining Software AG, Joe was Vice President of Product Marketing for infoShark, Inc., a provider of XML-based Data Exchange technologies. Previously, he held management positions at SpaceWorks, MERANT and Software AG.

Joe graduated from Drexel University with a bachelor's degree in marketing and computer science. He has also received advanced training from the California Institute of Technology.

Q1: Joe, congratulations on the introduction, in February, of your SOA-centric ‘crossvision’ suite – which certainly looks very topical, germane and capable.  Joe, to help our readers get a quick handle on it how would you best characterize ‘crossvission’ in terms some of the other methodologies in this space such as: ESB, composite application server, application server, service platform or even infrastructure manager … or do you prefer to see ‘crossvision’ as a whole new genre?

A1: Software AG’s crossvision does cover most of the methodologies you mention. For example, crossvision Service Orchestrator provides the ESB, and crossvision Application Composer enables composite application development. However, crossvision also represents a new genre in that it is an SOA Suite uniquely designed to enable SOA management and governance. This is because all of the services, rules, models and other artifacts created by the components of the crossvision suite are automatically populated into CentraSite, our SOA registry/repository jointly developed with Fujitsu.  Reports can be created that show where a given service is being used, and that predict the potential impact on other systems if a service is changed or removed.

Q2: Joe, the next obvious question is why a customer should consider ‘crossvision’ as opposed to all the other SOA offerings out there … many of which appear, at least on the surface, to offer similar capabilities to ‘crossvision’.  In other words, what unique value-adds does ‘crossvision’ offer relative to other products on the market?

A2: Certainly, many vendors today claim to provide solutions that help companies create Service-Oriented Architectures.  Most often these solutions are “Best of Breed,” with a focus on ESBs, BPM, Portals or other areas of an SOA.  Software AG’s crossvision provides a “Best of Suite” offering in which these tools are all pre-integrated to help the customer get to their SOA more quickly, cost-effectively and with less risk.

      Software AG also strives to be a neutral player in the enterprise, meaning that crossvision can work in conjunction with whatever operating system, DBMS or application server a customer has already chosen. Our standards-based approach to enabling SOA clearly distinguishes us from the large platform vendors whose SOA strategies are more focused on engendering vendor lock-in than enabling heterogeneous environments

      In addition, the crossvision suite addresses core integration problems, especially the more challenging situations that arise with legacy systems. With more than 35 years in enterprise IT, Software AG can tackle just about any legacy challenge.

      And as I mentioned previously, Software AG’s CentraSite makes it possible to find the right services for re-use, as well as document which services are used by whom so you can analyze the impact of change as well as define and control the Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) within your SOA.

Q3: Joe, looking at Software AG’s legacy modernization solutions recommendations I see that you still promote your ApplinX product (that you acquired last year from Sabratec) as well as the EntireX offering alongside ‘crossvision’.  Joe, can you please explain to us how you partition the market space between these three products … or are we just in a transition phase while you consolidate all of your application modernization, SOA, BPM initiatives under the ‘crossvision’ marquee … and to that end does the ‘crossvision’ suite already include the ApplinX and EntireX technology?

A3: ApplinX and EntireX technology form the basis of Software AG’s crossvision Legacy Integrator, which SOA-enables existing legacy applications such as Cobol or Natural applications running on the mainframe or RPG applications running on AS/400. In addition, ApplinX and EntireX help companies do what is commonly called Legacy Modernization.  This includes Web-enablement of "green screens", integrating native .NET or Java with legacy systems, or integrating vendor-specific applications with legacy systems.  A key example of this capability is our certified SAP NetWeaver XI Adapter, used by companies such as Volkswagen Financial Services.

Q4: Joe, when looking at EntireX and ‘crossvision’ one sees that you ‘OEM’ the 140 or so pivotal programmatic adapters you offer from a relatively well known player … who also of late has introduced an SOA middleware offering, replete with BPM, that appears to have many similarities with ‘crossvision’.  Thus, if a customer is looking for a SOA solution that relies exclusively on adapters to access all the backend applications … why should they work with you and use ‘crossvision’ rather than dealing directly with the adapter vendor and their middleware offering?

A4: It is a routine practice for Best of Suite solution providers like Software AG to partner for components (such as adapters) that provide a very common functionality. Therefore, what a customer looking for an SOA solution should really ask is what is unique about Software AG that separates us from other providers?  First, we are the only SOA suite provider on the market to offer our own, jointly-developed SOA registry/repository.  Second, we are undeniably worldwide experts at legacy modernization.  Third, we are one of the largest ESB vendors on the market today.  And finally, we are a very stable, profitable, global company with a long history of technology leadership.

Q5: Joe, lets please switch gears for a moment and talk about Linux.  Given that Software AG has a huge investment and a very good track record of supporting mainframe ‘MVS’ [i.e. z/OS] but these days also supports Linux, what are you seeing in terms of customer interest and adoption of Linux on the mainframe … and do you see mainframe Linux usurping z/OS as the preferred platform for mainframe-based SOA initiatives?

A5: Clearly, Linux on the mainframe has become a well-known approach for consolidating multiple UNIX platforms onto a single mainframe platform in order to ensure a high quality of service across all Linux partitions. However, I do not see mainframe Linux usurping z/OS. Applications running on z/OS cannot be easily moved to Linux without a migration effort.  Also, z/OS tools and products are not available on the Linux platform.

      Therefore, I believe that Mainframe Linux and z/OS will work hand in hand.  While z/OS will continue to be the powerful back end system for OLTP applications and databases, z/Linux will be used for web servers, e-business applications and packaged applications that have traditionally been available only for open systems platforms.

Q6: Joe, as my last question let me ask you about .NET.  I can see that ‘crossvision’ is heavily standard’s based – as it needs to be.  I also noticed that it is rather Java-centric.  So what about .NET given that we hear that the app. development community is more or less equally split between Java and .NET?

A6: Both .NET and Java development environments are very important to Software AG and our customers. To ensure that we have a platform-independent solution we do have several products built on a Java platform. But this does not limit our customers to developing applications and SOA solutions only within Java development environments. In fact, from an SOA perspective our products provide the ability to generate Web services, Java services and .NET services.

      For example with our Natural 2006 portfolio we have the Natural Business Services product that includes plug-ins for both Visual Studio .NET and Eclipse – allowing you to generate, test and deploy service proxies in .NET and Java in addition to Web services standards.  With ApplinX you have frameworks to support rapid development processes across development environments with ASP, .NET, JSP and XML.  To sum up, both Java and .NET will continue to be important to Software AG’s product development strategy.

Joe, this was indeed a pleasure and very illuminating.  Many, many thanks.  You really did a great job presenting crossvision to us and I think this interview will stand you in good stead. Thanks again, Joe.  Best of luck with crossvision, though I don't think you really need luck with a product of this caliber.