WEBM Webmediabrands (MM)

Having demonstrated its value to a global user community over the past three months, SOA Master Class Online emerged from beta service today. The site has been enhanced with an expanded array of content, sponsors, and SOA Masters. �SOA Master Class Online was established as a comprehensive educational resource that promotes mastery of SOA concepts, techniques and skills,� said Miko Matsumura, vice president, webMethods, Inc. �Since its launch, SOA Master Class Online has grown significantly as practitioners have demonstrated a continuing appetite for more factual information and self-paced learning. By drawing a clear line between vendor-neutral and sponsored content, we�ve also made it possible for members to more fully immerse themselves in the many services that the site has to offer.� �The biggest force preventing adoption of SOA is not the technical complexity of SOA projects, but the organizational, architectural, and employee skill gaps in most companies," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC. "The SOA Master Class Online is precisely focused on addressing that problem. In its beta stage, it has already made a significant impact on the space, helping SOA practitioners become SOA Masters.� Highlights of the site�s recent growth include: ebizQ sponsorship. ebizQ, the definitive portal for enterprise infrastructure and business integration specialists, joins leading SOA analyst firm ZapThink, iTKO, a provider of complete testing solutions for SOA (service-oriented architecture) software, and webMethods as a site sponsor. Double the content. New content includes MWDAdvisors� curriculum on Business/IT alignment, a new ebizQ Library, and a business track on Funding SOA from webMethods� Lance Hill. New quality and testing curriculum. The new SOA Testing curriculum from iTKO includes both key concepts and hands-on training. In support of these efforts, iTKO has also contributed SOA testing whitepapers, podcasts, and educational blogs. More SOA Masters. The list of SOA Masters contributing to the community continues to expand with the additions of Jeff Adkins, Tim Vibbert, and Beth Gold-Bernstein. Additional free tools. iTKO is offering a free download of its LISA WS-Testing� WSDL/SOAP testing tool. In addition, members can also continue to take advantage of the SOA Master Class Edition of the webMethods Infravio X-Registry as a free download. �While SOA has long been a known architectural best practice, most companies are just starting out on their SOA journey,� said ebizQ�s Gold-Bernstein. �SOA Master Class Online offers an interactive forum to engage with many of the practitioners that are creating tomorrow�s best practices for sustainable implementations. I�m excited to be a member of this community.� More on SOA Master Class Online SOA Master Class Online establishes a social network that gives SOA practitioners, architects, and evaluators a wide range of vendor-neutral curricula and content as well as clearly-labeled vendor information, including product demonstrations and downloadable evaluations. The site includes webinars and video content, syndicated blogs and discussion forums, and interactions with SOA Masters. Every topic on the site has integrated functions such as social book-marking, RSS feeds, and inline SOA glossary. The curriculum provides user-driven insight into creating the business case for SOA adoption, establishing an organizational structure for success with SOA, and defining the technology requirements for building an incremental path to SOA. Specific topics covered by the current coursework include: SOA Adoption � Driving your enterprise to broadly adopt a sustainable SOA framework SOA Funding � Insight into some of the pragmatic aspects of getting SOA projects funded SOA Governance � Detailed walkthrough of SOA-specific governance concepts, practices, and implementations SOA Quality � Team strategies for baking quality into every aspect of designing, building and maintaining SOA applications Additional resources available to the SOA Master Class Online community include white papers, analyst research, case studies, live events, reviews, blueprints, ROI calculators, evaluation guides, wiki�s, FAQs, and more. About ebizQ ebizQ (http://www.ebizq.net) communicates with its audience through the ebizQ Web site, the Virtual Integration Conference, and the Integration Insider magazine. All of ebizQ's content through each of its channels is freely available to subscribers. ebizQ is the definitive venue for business and IT professionals, vendors, and industry analysts with the need to exchange information on business integration technologies, problems, and solutions. We are singularly focused on business integration, providing the most comprehensive and timely information available on vendors, products, market directions, best practices, and any other industry element that comes into play. About iTKO iTKO, Inc. offers the most complete software framework for testing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) applications, allowing multiple business technology layers to be exercised within a single test case. iTKO's mission is to allow everyone involved in IT to own Complete, Collaborative, and Continuous� software quality, from development, to QA and business analysts. iTKO LISA Complete SOA Testing Framework performs unit, functional, regression, load and performance tests, without requiring test coding or script maintenance, saving up to 80% of the cost of testing over the course of six months. For dynamic web applications, web services, J2EE, .NET, Java objects, JMS/messaging, databases, and many more technologies, LISA provides live interaction with every layer, and gives everyone the "Freedom-to-Test" applications exactly as they will be deployed. Founded in 1999, the Dallas-based company's customers include Sun, Citi, Capgemini, AMD, TIBCO and i2. http://www.itko.com About webMethods, Inc. webMethods (Nasdaq:WEBM) provides business integration software to integrate, assemble and optimize available IT assets to drive business process productivity. webMethods delivers an innovative, enterprise-class business integration platform that incorporates proven integration technology with next generation capabilities into one interoperable set of tools that delivers a unique combination of efficiency, agility and control. webMethods combines industry leadership with a zealous commitment to customers to deliver tangible business value to more than 1,500 global customers. webMethods is headquartered in Fairfax, Va., with offices throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Japan. More information about the company can be found at www.webMethods.com. About ZapThink, LLC Founded in October 2000, ZapThink, LLC (http://www.zapthink.com) is an IT advisory and analysis firm that provides trusted advice and critical insight into the architectural and organizational changes brought about by the movement to XML, Web Services and Service Orientation. We provide our three target audiences of IT vendors, service providers and end-users a clear roadmap for standards-based, loosely coupled distributed computing -- a vision of IT meeting the needs of the agile business. ZapThink is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Its customers include Global 1000 firms and emerging businesses.