Deploy SOA and Cloud Computing with Confidence

Vordel's application networking products provide the governance, performance, interoperability and security framework which enable enterprises to exploit SOA and Cloud Computing.

Vordel XML Gateway - XML offload with data transformation, routing and acceleration
Vordel Policy Director - Centralized policy management across gateways
Vordel Reporter - Full visibility and reporting on SOA and Cloud usage
Vordel Policy Studio - Create and provision SOA policies
Vordel SOAPbox - Web Services testing

Governance
SOA and Cloud Computing both require a managed policy framework in place. Additionally, at runtime, visibility of service usage is vital. Vordel's products enforce policy management for SOA and Cloud Computing. As network infrastructure with visibility of service usage and performance, Vordel's products provide clear metrics on service usage to operations staff.

Integration
Vordel links together products from CA, Oracle, IBM , TIBCO, Sun, Microsoft and others, to allow applications connect to other applications and to the Cloud. Don't waste time coding your own integration across products - use proven, highly extensible products which can be configured in minutes.

Performance
Vordel accelerates system performance using the Vordel XML Accelerator Engine (VXA). Patent protected XML processing technology crunches through XML while selective caching of message and application content reduces system overhead. Your applications run faster and are less susceptible to traffic spikes.

Security
Vordel launched the world's first XML firewall in 2002, and builds all products from the ground up to provide a security layer to Web Services wherever they may be hosted. We protect your SOA and Cloud-based applications against malicious traffic and control access to your services. Don't leave your valuable services open to attack!

Visibility of SOA and Cloud

Vordel's products provide governance of services at both Design Time and Runtime.

At Design Time, Vordel's products enforce the policy-based control of services. New services are tested prior to going live in production. Clear delineation of roles ensures that only the administrators responsible for a service are permitted to deploy a new managed service.

At runtime, all service usage in a SOA, as well as connections to Cloud Computing services, are monitored. As well as providing this information in real-time dashboards and historical reports, Vordel's products also take action, based on service runtime data, by selectively caching and routing data.

Centralized policy management
Policies are central to SOA manageability. Policies are what make SOA more than just a collection of services.

Vordel's products allow policies to be treated as "first class objects" in the SOA, just like the services themselves. Creation, versioning, and deployment of services are controlled, using Vordel Policy Director.

Policy management is also a key requirement for regulatory compliance. By persisting policy in a declarative, standards-based format, an organization can ensure that its policies may be archived and rolled back as required.

Look Into the Cloud
Cloud Computing is attractive because of the very low upfront capital outlay, and also the low usage costs. However, organizations are grappling with how to leverage Cloud Computing services in a controlled and secure manner.

Vordel's products provide pre-built connectors into Cloud Computing infrastructure which means that the task of connecting local applications to the Cloud becomes an infrastructural task, not left to developers to write code. This application networking approach to Cloud Computing means that the data traffic to the Cloud is controlled and secured. It also addresses "under the radar" usage of Cloud Computing in organizations.

Monitoring
Vordel's Gateway products produce a stream of metrics data about the service in an SOA, as well as the usage of Cloud Computing infrastructure. Visibility of this information is via browser-based real-time monitoring. The data feed may also be viewed in management products such as CA UniCenter, HP Openview and Oracle Enterprise Manager. Vordel has led the way with the usage of REST-based services to provide a data feed of SOA metrics information.

Service Level Agreements
Organizations must ensure that their own services in their SOA adhere to performance expectations, such as sub one-second response times. Additionally, organizations need to ensure that the Cloud Computing services which they leverage also adhere to these performance expectations. Vordel's products allow the service response time, for SOA and Cloud, to be monitored. If a service does not meet its Service Level Agreement metric, then an alert is raised.

Identity Mediation for Identity Federation

Vordel's products include a wide range of connections into identity management infrastructure, including CA (SiteMinder), Microsoft (Active Directory), Oracle Access Manager, RSA, Tivoli Access manager and others. This identity integration allows Vordel's products to manage applications even those applications spanning security domains. For example, if a user logs into a Windows PC, then uses their browser to access a Web application which uses a J2EE application server, Vordel's products can provide seamless management of the entire transaction.

Vordel provides an inbuilt Security Token Service (STS) within its products to permit applications span security domains. Vordel's STS can, for example, convert from a SiteMinder Session ID to a SAML Assertion, allowing identity and entitlements information to flow across the network.

Cloud Integration - Avoid vendor lock-in
Vordel Gateway Cloud Edition offer businesses and organizations the option to securely leverage the services of multiple cloud computing vendors in their applications. Interoperability is particularly important for organizations who wish to use Cloud Computing without becoming locked-in to a single Cloud Computing vendor.

The Vordel Gateway connects internal and public Cloud services accessed by various departments and users. It acts as a focal point for enforcing policy and auditing usage of services, and that is independent and transparent to specific cloud providers.

Any-to-any data mappings including
  • COBOL
  • EDI (e.g. EDIFACT, ANSI/X12)
  • XML
  • Binary
Any-to-any protocol mapping including
  • HTTP (SOAP, Plain XML, REST, Web APIs)
  • SSL/TLS
  • IBM MQ
  • JMS
  • TIBCO Rendezvous
  • TIBCO EMS
  • FTP
  • Email (POP, SMTP)
Transformations including:
  • XSLT
  • Parameter injection
  • XML Enrichment
  • Extensibility via scripts and SDK

Performance through Acceleration

Cryptography and XML are both highly processor-intensive, and together they create a "perfect storm" of performance challenges. Vordel addresses this with a custom XML and security processing subsystem. Vordel's VXA (Vordel XML Accelerator) engine accelerates XML processing by providing an accelerated subsystem which underpins Vordel's products. VXA ensures that the highest levels of throughput can be maintained without having to compromise on security, integration or XML processing. We deliver the following:

Security Acceleration
  • XML Encryption
  • XML Signature
  • SSL
  • WS-Security
  • SAML
XML Acceleration
  • XML Parsing Acceleration
  • XML Transformation Acceleration
  • XPath and XML Schema Processing Acceleration
Integration Acceleration
  • Parameter Caching
  • Message Caching

Built from the ground up for security

Vordel protects your SOA and Cloud-based applications against malicious traffic, as well as providing controlled access to services. Vordel's products are built from the ground up to provide a security layer to Web Services.

Perimeter Defence
Vordel's products block malicious application traffic including XML-based attacks ("XML Bombs", highly-nested XML), viruses within SOAP attachments, and attacks which leverage Web 2.0 technologies such as JSON. More detailed information on the taxonomy of XML attacks can be found in the Vordel White paper on this topic.

Distributed protection across the network
Vordel Policy Director manages a distributed set of XML Gateways across an enterprise. These enforcement points may be XML Gateway appliances or software. Vordel Policy Director includes a centralized configuration server which offers a sophisticated range of features to enforce control policies across the network, not only at the perimeter.