"In the course of evaluating enterprise-class Web services, we've seen firsthand that exceptions pose a critical and challenging problem for any services-oriented application," said Kevin Poulter, application technology manager at British American Tobacco. "AmberPoint's approach of breaking down the exception pattern into its smaller components is the first time we've seen this distributed problem addressed with the right approach."
“We have a great deal of experience in developing and implementing complex Web services systems,” said Gregor Hohpe, senior architect at ThoughtWorks, a leading global systems integrator. “Exception handling is an area that is frequently overlooked, but is absolutely vital to a robust Web services solution. Handling exceptions in asynchronous, services-based architectures requires us to rethink our basic approach to error checking, and it has to be factored in early during the development cycle. We are impressed with the approach AmberPoint has taken to solving this distributed problem.”
“AmberPoint continues to lead the Web services marketplace with the AmberPoint Exception Manager,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. “Because Web services represent an abstraction layer that masks the underlying technology, Web services systems are inherently more prone to exceptions than tightly coupled distributed systems. Exceptions in Web services and service-oriented architecture environments can be very difficult to detect and resolve because problems may appear in multiple Web services messages. Organizations must address this issue in order to use Web services in enterprise-class production systems. With its agent-based architecture, AmberPoint is providing a solution that handles the complex problem of exceptions across distributed Web services systems.”
Companies that have implemented Web services-based applications find that such operational errors and unexpected business cases quickly increase maintenance overhead, lower business efficiencies and disrupt customer service. Neither IT Operations nor Business Operations have had the visibility they require to respond to these challenges proactively. As a result, they typically first discover exceptions through cryptic error logs or calls from customers.
"Web services systems have more moving parts than other application architectures," said Mark Unak, chief architect at Fujitsu. "Their distributed and real-time nature makes them more susceptible to errors and events that might not have been anticipated during design and implementation. In order to make meaningful use of Web services, organizations must overcome this hurdle. With its latest product offering, AmberPoint is addressing this production requirement."
AmberPoint Exception Manager
AmberPoint Exception Manager provides comprehensive capabilities for managing exceptions in distributed Web services environments. In addition to providing visibility into hard-to-resolve operational errors, the solution also handles exceptions that have business impact. For example, if a customer were to place a large order that could not be fulfilled, AmberPoint Exception Manager can alert the appropriate business manager to resolve the situation before the customer encounters the problem. The solution is based on AmberPoint’s industry-leading, distributed-agent architecture. Like all AmberPoint products, AmberPoint Exception Manager is completely standards-based, runs natively in .NET and J2EE environments and is completely non-invasive—requiring no additional coding to the Web services themselves.
The solution’s capabilities include:
Customer Benefits
AmberPoint Exception Manager detects and resolves operational errors and unusual business cases before they can impact an organization’s bottom line. Benefits include:
“As soon as a company takes any business application into production, and no matter the amount of quality assurance and testing they’ve done, they face the task of dealing with exceptions,” Paul Butterworth, chief technology officer at AmberPoint. “In response to this customer requirement, we have designed a solution that not only allows them to resolve IT exceptions rapidly but also increases their ability to capitalize on business opportunities.”
Press Contacts:
AmberPoint, Inc.
510-433-6553
bdever@amberpoint.com
Kim Abreu
Atomic PR
415-553-4305
kim@atomicpr.com
