Leading Technology Vendors Announce Completion of Specifications Designed to Simplify SOA Application Development
OASIS Assumes Future Stewardship of SCA Specifications; Launches New Members Section

Beijing China, March 21, 2007 – Eighteen leading technology vendors focused on driving technology initiatives supporting the creation of industry standards around service oriented architectures (SOA), today announced the completion of key specifications and formal submission to OASIS for future stewardship. The Service Component Architecture (SCA) specifications are designed to help simplify the creation and composition of business services, critical to building applications using SOA. With the specifications complete, the partners are turning over future stewardship and the standardization of SCA specifications to OASIS, under a New Members Section to be launched April 2, 2007. Additionally, the partners have completed work on the Service Data Objects (SDO) specifications, designed to enable uniform access to data residing in multiple locations and formats, and will turn over future stewardship of Java-based specifications to the Java Community Process and non-Java based specifications to OASIS.

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Since November 2005, eighteen companies have joined the effort to work on new industry specifications aimed at simplifying SOA application development. Partner companies include BEA Systems, Cape Clear, IBM Corporation, Interface21, IONA, Oracle, Primeton Technologies, Progress Software, Red Hat, Rogue Wave Software, SAP AG, Siemens, Software AG, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, TIBCO Software, Xcalia and Zend. Together, these companies have achieved significant progress around SCA and SDO specifications.
The SCA and SDO specifications can help organizations to more easily create new and transform existing IT assets, enabling reusable services that may be rapidly assembled to meet changing business requirements.  These specifications greatly reduce complexity associated with developing applications by providing a way to unify services regardless of programming language and deployment platform. Both are emerging technologies designed to simplify the representation of business logic and business data. Early Customers are already implementing and gaining value.

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The partners continue to incubate and drive technology initiatives focused on simplifying SOA application development. For example, the partners are currently working on the New Data Access Services (DAS) Project, which will provide mappings from SDO to multiple data sources including relational databases and Java Persistence (JPA) Objects. Additionally, the group’s vendor-neutral Web site (www.OSOA.org) will continue to serve as an information resource for access to draft specifications, white papers, and provide a forum for industry input and feedback.

About Open SOA
The Open SOA Collaboration represents an informal group of industry leaders that share a common interest: defining a language-neutral programming model that meets the needs of enterprise developers who are developing software that exploits Service Oriented Architecture characteristics and benefits. The Collaboration is not a Standards Body; it is a set of vendors who wish to innovate rapidly in the development of this programming model and to deliver Specifications to the community for implementation. These specifications are made available to the community on a Royalty Free basis for the creation of compatible implementations. When mature, the intent is to hand these specifications over to a suitable Standards Body for future shepherding. For more information, visit www.osoa.org.

About OASIS
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. For more information, visit www.oasis-open.org.