Never before has so much intelligence data been collected and never has the challenge of securely sharing these valuable assets been greater. As new intelligence systems come online, issues inevitably arise around the need to make data and security credentials interoperable between these new systems and existing capabilities.

As the leading provider of secure messaging and security Gateway solutions to the US Federal Intelligence Community, Layer 7 will be at the show, demonstrating its solutions for data and security interoperability within the enterprise and the Cloud. If you’re attending the DoDIIS conference, stop by Booth 917 to see first-hand how you can resolve interoperability and fine-grained access challenges with a Common Criteria EAL 4+ certified solution from Layer 7.

For several years, Layer 7 has proudly served national security communities in the US, Canada and Europe, with high-resiliency API security and management technologies for various SOA, mobile and Cloud initiatives. We are proud to include among our clients some of the most demanding organizations on Earth, including the US DoD, US Department of Homeland Security, US Department of Justice, US Department of Transportation and NATO.

Layer 7 is continuing its efforts to help organizations like these address the challenges and opportunities associated with SOA-based information sharing and interoperability in the context of reduced budgets, increasing cyber threats, Cloud infrastructure and the need to leverage existing systems in a networked environment.

Due to the sensitive nature of the projects, much of our work to make these efforts successful goes unheralded. However, we are thrilled that one of our recent efforts in supporting Northrup Grumman modernize the US Air Force Air & Space Operations Center Weapons System has been publicly announced.

Layer 7 is working with a consortium of vendors under Northrup Grumman to make the Air & Space Operations Center more agile and net-centric via Service-Oriented, API-based approaches to information sharing. Clearly, SOA and net-centric computing are becoming cornerstones of how applications are discovered, connected and protected and how information is shared.

Many of Layer 7’s customers have already made the move into the Cloud. These companies have benefited greatly from our expertise in governance for SOA. This is because SOA governance is directly applicable to the Cloud. Our white paper The Value of Application Service Governance for Cloud Computing provides a detailed explanation of this connection.

Written by internationally-respected SOA/Cloud thought leader David Linthicum, in collaboration with our own Scott Morrison, this white paper outlines how the structure of SOA – services distributed across departments and locations – is at the core of all Cloud computing. So, governance principles that are effective in SOA also work in the Cloud.

To learn more, download The Value of Application Service Governance for Cloud Computing.

This summer, we presented a webinar that addressed these specific issues. Created in association with Red Hat, Security, Governance & Integration in a Cloud-Connected World provided deep insight into how enterprises can address integration, management and security challenges arising from technologies like SOA and Cloud.

With input from Pierre Fricke, Director of SOA Products at Red Hat, as well as Jaime Ryan, our Partner Solutions Architect, this webinar proposed combining an enterprise service bus with a SOA Gateway to create a secure, standards-based system for governing integrations that cross organizational boundaries. You can stream the full recording in the player below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol8YO9F3O7k&feature=channel_video_title[/youtube]

The report groups its criteria into three high-level categories: Current Offering, Strategy and Market Presence. Layer 7’s “SecureSpan SOA Gateway scored well in all of the major functional categories.” In fact, we actually had the highest score in the Current Offering category and the Strategy category. As a Leader, we were recognized for our broad and deep support for messaging styles, attack protection, trust enablement and content transformation.

Top vendors were evaluated, so we feel it’s a great honor to be positioned as a Leader in this SOA Application Gateways Wave. For more information on the report, read our press release.

According to Gartner: “All vendors considered in this Magic Quadrant have articulated a cloud strategy, and have provided evidence that they have started to execute it.” Notably, the report also states that “SOA governance in the cloud also overlaps consistently with API management, the combination of services enabling organizations to deploy, intermediate, govern, catalog and secure public Web APIs based on Web-oriented architecture (WOA) principles, mainly for the use of mobile applications.” The expansion of SOA technologies and governance models across the Web and into the Cloud is central to Layer 7’s business model, as we continue to develop best-of-breed solutions for SOA governance, API management and Cloud integration.

And here’s some more good news. We are offering our blog readers complimentary access to this valuable research report. Simply click here to register for access to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SOA Governance Technologies 2011. For more information on the Magic Quadrant and Layer 7’s inclusion in the report, you can read our press release.

The ESB has emerged in recent years in response to the increased need for IT integration, which enterprises have experienced as a result of rapidly proliferating Cloud and mobile technologies. ESBs tend to be extremely feature-rich. Consequently, they can also be very complex, to the point that they are often difficult and costly to install, administer and secure.

Our new white paper explains that a SOA Gateway represents a simpler, more cost-effective alternative to the ESB – crucially, an alternative that does not require the enterprise to compromise on security. Using a SOA Gateway as an ESB enables a modern integration architecture but with a much lighter footprint and user experience.

Click here to download SOA Appliances: A Simple & Secure Approach to Integration across SOA, Cloud & API

Not All SOA Gateways are Created Equal notes that most Gateways on the market are able to address a good deal of the most common functional requirements. However, the white paper explains, the total cost of ownership (TCO) varies widely between Gateways – and TCO extends well beyond the initial licensing fees to encompass a range of significant factors.

The white paper goes on to examine those factors that will have the greatest impact on TCO, namely:

• Ease of deployment and customization
• Manageability, scalability and reliability
• Cost of upgrade or repurchasing

Click here to find out more about the white paper and to download the PDF

How to Choose a SOA Gateway expands upon the content of this white paper to provide business managers with practical instructions on which key operational and functional needs, as well as potential pitfalls, to consider when selecting a SOA Gateway, including:

• Portability considerations
• Scalability risks
• Extensibility and upgradeability needs
• Global management implications
• Hidden operational costs

You can either click here to find out more about the webinar and to download a copy or you can stream it in the player below, courtesy of the Layer 7 YouTube channel:

Our white paper The Role of XML Gateways in SOA is consistently one of the most popular items in the Resource Library, which goes to show that the topic of SOA is still on a lot of people’s minds. This white paper explains how XML Gateways deliver “application networking” functionality, making it possible to complete critical SOA tasks without programming.

In contrast to conventional networking devices, XML gateways specialize in the application-level protocols rendered within XML or Web services messages. An XML gateway can rapidly inspect and process XML messages to efficiently perform a range of processes vital to SOA, including content routing protocol switching, data transformation and identity authentication.

By doing so, XML gateways make it easy for SOA architects to:

• Implement security
• Optimize performance
• Enable advanced policy operations

To get more detailed insight into the value of XML gateways to SOA deployments, download the white paper.

• To provide an overview of how and why many organizations are accelerating the design and deployment of SOA security and governance environments
• To discuss (and hopefully provide answers to) questions arising from this acceleration

To give you an idea of the ground I covered in my presentation, here’s a link to the slide deck I used. I’d also like to take a moment here to explain why I believe the acceleration of SOA security and governance programs is an important issue that demands our attention at this time.

First of all, SOA is continuing to expand throughout organizations, across organizational boundaries and into the Cloud. Organisations are reacting as dynamically as they can to the integration challenges this creates. At the same time, security and governance need to keep up, so the smart players are also accelerating these aspects of their SOA environments.

Second, the acceleration of SOA security and governance programs creates issues of its own. While, the rapid infrastructural changes created by growth in SOA and Cloud adoption certainly need to be managed and security must be enforced consistently, acceleration of security and governance raises a number of tricky questions, which I endeavoured to tackle in my talk:

• How do you manage the implementation of SOA security and governance without slowing down your organisation?
• How will your SOA remain operational as it evolves?
• How can you deliver APIs quickly while enforcing perimeter security and integration?

I got some very interesting feedback on my answers at the forum and I’m certainly looking forward to hearing more from the online community!