Web 2.0 seems to be the catchword in the enterprise space today. Web 2.0 applications have been around for some time, in the form of blogs and wiki's and companies like Google pushed this concept further with their social networking website (orkut), youtube.com, etc.

Now, how does this intriguing technology benefit an enterprise, is a question worth mulling upon. The answer lies in real time collaboration. Web 2.0 is somewhat of a conceptual base towards an enterprise's transition to service-oriented architecture (SOA). The philosophy behind the architecture is enabling various applications to communicate with each other depending on needs (business needs), i.e. applications basically begin servicing each other.

Biztech 2.0 recently spoke to Akshay Aggarwal, head - Systems Engineering, BEA regarding the company's new Aqualogic release and how it could pave the way for SOA.

Why Web 2.0?

BEA saw a lot of potential in Web 2.0. The buzzword would normally refer to social networking. However, we are all basically working in a collaborative environment where we need various resources from different online sources. Web 2.0 allows you to have these mash-up environments, which allow users to accumulate resources and share them on a common page, without needing to custom develop an application.

How does Aqualogic function on the fundamentals of Web 2.0?

Aqualogic works somewhat on the same lines as Web 2.0, but it provides hordes of capabilities, where one can define applications as a user, build a network of users who they are working with, and allow this network of users to access a set of common resources. BEA has 3 products on this front - Aqualogic Pathways, Ensemble and Pages.

We often speak to customers about the kind of requirements they have. We found that there was a real need for an effective collaboration solution, where users could create mash-up applications of sorts to get information from various resources and put it onto the website without too much custom coding.

What kind of value will Aqualogic bring to the enterprise?

The value proposition is very straightforward. The solution allows collaboration in the sense that users can develop these little applications, which can in turn access various resources within and outside the enterprise. This in turn allows a very interesting method of sharing and distribution of information. Different users can be assigned different roles that they play within the organisation. These users can then access information based on their respective roles.

Now, this makes sense to an enterprise, because you have all the information, configured to be accessed a certain way, and this in turn would lead to better collaboration.

What are the security mechanisms incorporated in the software to restrict access?

We have an Aqualogic enterprise security, where you can implement security on services that have been created using Aqualogic. A user hierarchy can be created in order to define authorisations, entitlements, etc. Services are assigned to users based on the ‘role’ the user plays in the organisation. The Aqualogic server also allows policy-based security mechanisms.

Is the Aqualogic product line an extension of BEA’s ongoing SOA strategy?

BEA came up with the Aqualogic product line because of the immense potential in SOA. Traditionally, BEA had products relevant to application development and integration applications.

Many people have custom developed applications or packaged applications such as SAP and Siebel. The company discovered that the people were interested in service enabling their systems, so as to create a service infrastructure layer in the current environment, which would enable access to all these systems. Hence, users can define policies through which these systems can access each other, and provide information in the form of a common dashboard.

BEA believes that the Web 2.0 initiative in the form of Aqualogic is one of the steps the company is taking in order to enable enterprises to shift towards SOA.

Gearing up for intense competition

Recently, Oracle launched WebCentre, which is a Web 2.0 based collaboration application for the enterprise, and IBM is also said to have something under its sleeves. This arena could witness some fierce competition, considering other vendors would follow suit. This will probably lead to better products, better services, and possibly more innovative functionality.

Larger enterprises like TCS and WIPRO are already showing a lot of interest in these applications. SOA is already becoming an important topic of discussion in the management of these companies, considering the amount of collaboration required within the particularly larger enterprises.

"As of now, we haven't seen too many active deployments, however, deployments will be noticed only a few months down the line, considering the solution needs to be customised depending on the enterprise, which would take a little time,"� added Aggarwal.