Progress Software adds cross-process visibility with Actional 7.1

Progress Software has beefed up its Actional SOA management offerings with the release today of Progress Actional 7.1, which provides unified visibility into business processes, and connects those business processes to the underlying SOA infrastructure.

Key features of the latest release include an automatic discovery feature that keeps information accurate, allowing users to compare how processes change from day to day. User can also set thresholds for alters about behavior and performance, and policy enforcement will automatically adjust when services or processes change.

Progress, Bedford, Mass., added the Actional product line to its SOA arsenal just a little over two years ago with the acquisition of Actional Corporation in a $32-million deal.

Progress said that Actional 7.1 will integrate with Lombardi TeamWorks, and the company plans to provide native support for other business-process management (BPM) solutions, including offerings from Software AG and Fujitsu. Actional also includes a software development kit (SDK) that allows third parties to add support for other BPM and SOA infrastructure products.

The new version also includes support for non-XML payload data, which is designed to allow users to inspect and analyze message content in such existing services as Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and Enterprise JavaBeanT (EJB).

Last July, I had a lengthy podcast discussion about Software as a Service (SaaS) with Colleen Smith, managing director of Saas for Progress. You can listen to the podcast here.

For more information on the latest offering, see the Actional Web site.