Cape Clear Aims To Make ESB Less Complex
ESB (enterprise service bus) products from leading vendors do carry some of that legacy architecture; however, well developed ESB software such as Cape Clear ESB can reduce cost by taking advantage of code reusability by abstracting technology from the business side and providing end-to-end management of services.
Developing services can be intimidating, even to seasoned architects who have a firm footing in traditional application development practices. For instance, granular services can be troublesome because they can lead to overmodularizing business logic and create a maintenance nightmare. Conversely, developing coarse grain services oversimplifies service interactions and can lead developers to duplicate work and trump their initial intent of creating well architected service models.
Cape Clear, Waltham, Mass., uses a services-centric approach as the center of an SOA, in which its ESB software facilitates mapping of business entities to services. Cape Clear's top-down approach, which emphasizes WSDL design and mapping services to existing infrastructures.
Cape Clear ESB 6.5 simplifies interaction between services by managing the quality of services and helps orchestrate these services using BPEL. By supporting most major standards, Cape Clear developed a highly modular ESB product that does not require customers to duplicate products already in place.
Cape Clear ESB Orchestration Builder and its design tools are now integrated with Eclipse and provide all the functionality necessary to design services and business processes. However, business process and service features in Cape Clear 6.5 are currently meant for developers, leaving businesses entirely out of any implementation phases. Cape Clear needs to correct this cut-and-dry view of the development process.
The company's two-tier channel program offers partnering opportunities to solution providers looking to integrate the company's offerings into SOA. Both levels accommodate referral fees ranging up to 3 percent. The signed reseller program accommodates stepped discount levels from 5 percent to 25 percent for revenue commitments on an annual basis.
Both levels offer pre- and post-sales, marketing and technical support, joint presentations on an internal and external (customer/prospect) basis, joint marketing investments, co-sponsored Webinars, conference/booth participation, lead/pipeline sharing, and more. Territories are not protected and are deferred to each partner according to their geographic and account-specific preferences. For $20,000, on-site partner training is available. There are two types of support: Standard Support providessupport during business hours for integration projects, while Extended Support provides around-the-clock support. Both support plans are fee-based and offer a variety of options.
While Cape Clear's channel program offers little for the entry-level integrator, those already playing in the field will find the offering complete enough to support critical projects.
