BEA buys Flashline to bulk up SOA line

BEA Systems on Wednesday said it purchased privately held company Flashline to gain software for managing service-oriented architecture projects.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cleveland-based Flashline builds so-called governance tools to share information on software development projects.

BEA said that Flashline's products, which have been on the market since 2001, will be renamed AquaLogic Enterprise Repository and be integrated into BEA's existing governance-related tools.

Specifically, Flashline's repository stores information on what software components have been written and whether there are dependencies among different programs. In addition, it collects policy information, such as security access rules, and connects to project management programs.

These governance tools, which are meant to improve oversight of ongoing application development, are increasingly important as corporate customers rework their back-end systems around a service-oriented architecture (SOA), a design approach that advocates modular, reusable programs.

"(Flashline) gives us the ability to tie all that together and bring visibility into the SOA space," said Paul Patrick, BEA vice president and chief architect of its Aqualogic product line.

BEA executives said on Wednesday that the company intends to continue to sell an AquaLogic-branded registry based on a third-party product from Systinet. The registry will be used to manage shared software components once they are in use, while the Flashline repository will store information collected while software is still being designed, executives said.

Vendors of infrastructure software, like BEA, are seeking to build out their product portfolios to address anticipated spending on SOAs. Earlier this year, BEA bought Fuego Software for its business-process automation server and tools.

[Broward Horne]

SOA Meme - Why SOA Matters

BEA is two years behind the curve...

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=soa_reheated


Governance Services meme continued rising throughout the entire Dot Com crash...

http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme/?entry=governance_services_meme