AmberPoint integrates seamlessly into any IT environment, leveraging the existing infrastructure by integrating with leading systems management solutions (such as IBM Tivoli and Microsoft Operations Manager) security solutions (such as Netegrity or SunOne Identity Server) and leading application servers (such as Microsoft IIS, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Apache Tomcat, etc.). AmberPoint's standards-based software solutions communicate bi-directionally with any infrastructure software equipped with a Web services interface.

With its industry-first agentless architecture for SOA runtime governance, AmberPoint delegates runtime governance policy execution to existing SOA infrastructure. This enables organizations to better leverage the intrinsic and increasingly sophisticated capabilities of XML appliances, Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs), application servers, operating systems and other SOA infrastructure.

Integrates with ESM & NSM Solutions
By integrating its with leading enterprise systems management and network systems management solutions, AmberPoint provides the capabilities Operations staff require to cohesively manage across multiple layers of their enterprises—from hardware and networks to Web services. AmberPoint’s out-of-box ability to publish management events to the leading ESM/NSM solutions enable operators to view such critical SOA information as operational health, SLA violations, instrumented statistics, system exceptions and alerts.

• Rapid Detection of System Problems: By integrating with ESM/NSM solutions, AmberPoint provides the ability to correlate service failures and outages with system, network, application and database failures. For example, an operator can quickly determine if a service failure needs to be tracked down and isolated or if it is associated with some other resource failure.
• Control of the Complete Environment: AmberPoint delivers information on SOA systems, enabling organizations to manage the real-time conditions of their complete IT environments.
• Agentless Policy Enforcement: AmberPoint delegates runtime policy execution to the SOA infrastructure whenever policy-capable infrastructure is in place, leveraging as much of the native policy execution capabilities of the runtime infrastructure as possible. As a result, enterprises realize greater returns on their investments in SOA platforms and runtime frameworks, while fully utilizing their SOA infrastructure.
• Automated Management: AmberPoint plays an active role in managing service-oriented systems, automatically performing actions that ensure operational health and optimize business value. AmberPoint complements enterprise system management capabilities, extending self-management across the IT landscape.
• Understanding for Business Impact: Because it monitors the content of service requests and responses, AmberPoint is able to associate business relevance with events published to ESM/NSM solutions, allowing operations staff to determine the impact of those events.
• Comprehensive Management across .NET and Java: AmberPoint solutions are optimized for both .NET and Java platforms. It extends comprehensive management capabilities of the leading ESM/NSM solutions to SOA applications built on either leading platform.

Leveraging the Security Infrastructure
To effectively provide XML and SOA security for distributed and heterogeneous environments, AmberPoint is designed to work with the existing security infrastructure. AmberPoint integrates with the following solutions:

• Platform vendors – AmberPoint leverages platform-provided security features from Microsoft, IBM, BEA and Sun for XML-based security features, container-based authentication, digest-based authentication and authentication against LDAP or Active Directory.
• Identity management solutions – AmberPoint leverages security capabilities such as certificate-based authentication, single-sign on (SSO) and existing access control policies.
• XML firewalls – AmberPoint can be deployed with appliance and software solutions that function like XML firewalls or gateways. These security brokers could be deployed in the DMZ to send trusted assertions to an AmberPoint management agent. AmberPoint can also consolidate security information from its agents and the XML firewall to provide a consolidated security dashboard. AmberPoint agents can send instructions to the firewall to take security actions on its behalf.

Extends across Heterogeneous Environments
AmberPoint offers the only management solutions that are implemented natively in both .NET and J2EE. You can deploy platform-specific agents for managing heterogeneous Web services throughout the enterprise and manage them all via AmberPoint management console(s). That means you can fully leverage the capabilities and performance advantages of the leading SOA platforms while preserving a distributed environment.

AmberPoint runtime governance solutions extend across the entire SOA stack, from client applications to the back-end system components, and across all types of message and transport protocols. AmberPoint includes agents that support a wide range of SOA-related components, including databases, JMS and MQ messaging systems, EJB-based applications, and ESBs. This same technology can be used by end users and partners to provide visibility into virtually any type of component, including hardware appliances, new transport protocols, and home-grown solutions. AmberPoint agents provide true end-to-end SOA visibility by delivering information on dependencies, performance, service levels, and exceptions.

Synchronization with Registries
AmberPoint automatically discovers the services recorded in a standard registry as well as the policies associated with those services. It then automatically assigns and enforces those policies accordingly, thus ensuring that the policies described in the registry are enforced as intended.

• Bidirectional service communication: Automatically discovers services recorded in the registry as well as adding to the registry any new, previously unlisted services discovered in the running environment
• Bidirectional endpoint communication: Automatically updates the registry with changes to service endpoints made in the running environment—such as the creation of proxies, virtual services, and other intermediaries
• Bidirectional policy communication: Retrieves policies referenced in registries and enforces them at runtime, as well as posting new policies and policy changes to registries
• Service Scorecards: AmberPoint publishes vital data on service behavior, enabling developers to choose services based on performance
• Documents discrepancies between design and development intentions and runtime realities
• Supports connection to multiple registries at the same time
• Bridges the gap between design time and runtime governance