The SOA Link initiative, started by Infravio in May 2006, aims to ensure interoperability among the participating vendors by defining how they share information via a central registry. For example, vendors of development, testing, runtime and management software all need information about service contracts; the initiative might help them to share this information and be notified when it changes. Today, four companies from the testing/QA area have announced support for SOA Link: iTKO, provider of end-to-end SOA testing solutions, Mindreef, well known for their SOAPscope diagnostic tool, and Solstice, who provide automated testing tools for SOA and Parasoft, who provide testing tools for SOA.
SOA Link is very similar to another initiative, the Governance Interoperability Framework (GIF), created by Systinet in April 2005. Systinet and Infravio compete in the service registry market, both providing products aimed at providing a registry/repository solution for advanced SOA deployments. Systinet was acquired by Mercury in January.
HP, Amberpoint, Layer 7 Technologies, Composite Software and Reactivity participate in both GIF and SOA Link. The need for having two competing initiatives has been questioned in the past.
SOA Link is very similar to another initiative, the Governance Interoperability Framework (GIF), created by Systinet in April 2005. Systinet and Infravio compete in the service registry market, both providing products aimed at providing a registry/repository solution for advanced SOA deployments. Systinet was acquired by Mercury in January.
HP, Amberpoint, Layer 7 Technologies, Composite Software and Reactivity participate in both GIF and SOA Link. The need for having two competing initiatives has been questioned in the past.