Software AG added a complex-event processing tool to its software portfolio on Monday, and said it will release cloud-enabled versions of webMethods and its Aris business process modeling tool in the third quarter.
WebMethods Business Events will allow companies to correlate event data and identify useful patterns in data from different sources, the company said. The software is being shown for the first time at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, this week, said Software AG Chief Technology Officer Wolfram Jost.
The software is based on a complex-event processing engine acquired through the purchase of Germany company Realtime Monitoring in early 2010. It performs continuous queries on streams of events, an approach Software AG says provides traceable and repeatable results. This approach will also allow enterprises using Software AG's Aris MashZone software to visualize business events in real time, the company said.
Software AG also announced the general availability of webMethods OneData, an integrated version of the OneData process-driven master data management (MDM) tool it acquired when it bought software company Data Foundations in October.
Aris, too, is the fruit of an acquisition, that of IDS Scheer, which Software AG bought in July 2009. CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich promised another major acquisition every two to four years going forward.
Jost also announced plans to release cloud-enabled versions of some software in the third quarter.
WebMethods and Aris will be packaged for use on public cloud platforms such as Amazon EC2, or for use in private clouds built using software from VMware, the company said.
Customers will be able to integrate their internal applications with the cloud offerings, Jost said.
Software AG is joining Oracle and others in porting its stack of middleware to EC2, although its planned support for VMware reflects the fact that many enterprise customers may not be comfortable running such software on public clouds.
The vendor is also planning to roll out a set of "cloud ready" services as part of the launch. The services will offer customers "advanced preparation, strategy formulation, and process digitization and analysis for cloud requirements," Software AG said.
Software AG's announcement will give users another major option for middleware in the cloud. But the news' significance should be placed in the proper context, according to Forrester Research analyst John Rymer.
It's now become common for vendors to make their software compatible for cloud deployments, he said via e-mail.
"The next steps are more interesting -- rewriting/refactoring products to take advantage of cloud elasticity and multitenancy," Rymer added. "This will take years, and all the major vendors must do it."