The Challenge

Information drives business. But today's demand for information requires a different approach to integration. Everyday, the need for faster access to more relevant information grows as the sources and nature of information become more varied and dispersed.

• Information Sources and Ownership: Information sources include legacy systems (e.g., mainframe, client-server) but are also more varied and dynamic. Applications are delivered on the web, in the cloud, and as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Business owners, who are taking a more active role in managing information, view information as a strategic asset for business success. And information must be delivered in smaller targeted information packages to meet the needs of a broader and more diverse audience.

• Information Timeliness: The demand for "right-time" information requires greater flexibility and timeliness of data.
• Data is not enough: Organizations need Intelligent Information. Intelligent information is data with context. Context includes business processes; rules that need to be articulated and enforced; data calculations, quality, and timeliness. Intelligent information needs to be delivered in the context of rapidly changing business processes to meet time to market, agility and regulatory demands. If the business process changes, the integration can not break–there's too much at stake.

Integration technology has not kept up with changing information needs. The majority of technology solutions are designed to handle a specific data movement or data transaction problem and tend to be brittle, static and ill-equipped to address the varied and dynamic nature of information. Vendors that do address multiple integration methods typically offer tools that are not pre-integrated to work together out of the box, driving up acquisition, deployment and maintenance costs.

Organizations are turning to Services-Oriented Architecture to attempt to solve the problem. However, companies are struggling to implement an effective SOA infrastructure while also leveraging investments in existing systems. Three out of the four top reasons for the slowness of SOA adoption include lack of internal SOA expertise, lack of skill sets, and cost and/or resources required to implement SOA¹. Additionally, many alternative approaches to SOA are based on proprietary technologies leading to vendor-lock-in, making it difficult to switch vendors.

The Solution – SOALogix Confero – Information-driven Integration

SOALogix Confero manages the flow of information among people, business processes, and applications from within and across the extended enterprise. More than data integration and unlike any approach taken in today's market, SOALogix Confero is information-driven, creating a "right-time" information environment rather than static integration based on rigid, physical connections. An information-driven integration delivers Intelligent Information, or data with context, to the right people and systems at the right time.

Confero is built from the ground up on SOA/WOA principles and encapsulates more than 35 years of combined SOA experience. Not hampered by legacy code, only SOALogix Confero supports multiple methods of integration in one seamless solution that delivers the best practices, functionality, and components required to meet the information demands of today's enterprise. And, Confero easily integrates with an organization's existing SOA infrastructure. Today, more than ever, companies can ill afford the cost, time, and expense of supporting multiple, inflexible, data-driven, incompatible integration tools.

SOALogix Confero:

• Delivers only the right information needed to those that need it when they need it, based on business rules and specific events
• Promotes stronger governance over information access
• Integrates information from a variety of data sources (legacy systems, SaaS, Web, Cloud and more)
• Manages the flow of information for both virtual data access and physical data movement within and across the extended enterprise
• Decouples business process from data so organizations can quickly and easily make business process changes without "breaking" the integration
• Delivers information in smaller targeted information packages to meet the dynamic needs of a broader and more diverse audience.

SOALogix Confero is:

• A comprehensive SOA/WOA-based integration infrastructure using an information-driven approach to create dynamic information services

Confero Appliance Spectrum


• A practical solution for providing the "information layer" required to manage the flow of information for both virtual data access and physical data movement
• A unified architecture and common platform that supports the integration infrastructure requirements for implementing Enterprise Information Management
• A rapidly deployable, affordable solution available as software or subscription, which lowers upfront costs and further reduces the risks typically associated with implementing integration solutions

Benefits for Customers

• Dramatically increase business agility and improve efficiency by providing "right time" access to critical information and promoting governance over how information is used
  • Create sustainable integration processes that are easily reconfigured as business demands, applications, and computing environments evolve
  • More quickly respond to event-driven information changes that impact competitiveness and business health
• Enable Enterprise Information Management using SOA/WOA principles and standards
  • Easily integrates with an organization's existing SOA infrastructure
• Empower information-driven business initiatives, such as composite applications, mash-ups, master data management, and operational business intelligence in addition to traditional data synchronization/integration needs
  • Create easily maintainable composite applications and mash-ups driven by intelligent information-based services
  • Deliver right-time, quality information to operational business intelligence and business activity monitoring initiatives using a consistent information architecture
• Extend the life of existing critical applications
  • Take advantage of dynamic information and integration services required to ensure legacy applications participate in evolving service-oriented and web-oriented architectures
• Rely on an integration platform that evolves as IT architectures evolve
• Eliminate the skill-intensive coding and maintenance usually required to deliver SOA-based integration, legacy system modernization, or composite application deployments.
• Protect your investment - Only SOALogix offers SurePath™, SOALogix's unprecedented standard maintenance support policy. With SurePath, costs to upgrade adapters or new versions of supported endpoint systems are included in Confero's standard maintenance. SurePath eliminates high maintenance costs typically associated with integration solutions. No longer are organizations held hostage to costly customizations for routine or unanticipated IT changes.

Benefits for Partners

• Provides system integrators (SIs) with a single information integration platform with which diverse business requirements, such as master data management, integration and composite application solutions can be developed and deployed
• Provides an embed-able information/integration service layer to independent software vendors (ISVs) who are looking for more robust integration capabilities, packaged integrations with other products, or seamless participation in SOA/WOA IT infrastructures.