Alcatel launches web services gateway

NEW DELHI: Alcatel-Lucent, a telecommunications provider, announced on Wednesday the launch of Web Services Gateway 3.0, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) appliance that lets enterprises and service providers deliver an open and secure Web services environment for their customers’ business-to-business transactions and Web 2.0 services.

Alcatel-Lucent’s web service gateway (WSG) ensures that companies transforming their businesses through business process automation, Web 2.0 and cloud computing services can secure and govern how users interact online to prevent fraud, mitigate risk and maintain compliance, said a press release.

Associated with the timing of the new release, Alcatel-Lucent appears for the first time in the 2009 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SOA Governance, placing in the 'visionary' quadrant. According to the Gartner report, visionaries help articulate important market trends and direction.

“Market trends indicate that corporations will increase their reliance on cloud-based services and securing interactions with the cloud will be critical for proper governance,” said Frank Kenny, research director for Applications Strategy and Governance at Gartner.

The Alcatel-Lucent 8550 WSG Release 3.0 would provide a finely detailed level of control that enables innovative service providers to securely provide new Internet-based, revenue-generating services.

Protected by the Web Services Gateway, a service provider could allow a third-party entertainment company, for example, to provide localized movie schedule information to a user without jeopardizing either the third party or end-user’s data, the release added.

It features a detailed, context-sensitive capture of usage patterns that lets organizations monitor and adapt to security breaches -- including fraudulent transactions from trusted users.

Provides granular views of user-centric Web services, ensuring authorized individuals (including those offering third-party services) have access to the information they require

“The 8550 Web Services Gateway provides the enterprise a reusable corporate-wide infrastructure that can be applied to many facets of governance, from security to compliance,” said Michel Emelianoff, Alcatel-Lucent vice president, Enterprise Security Solutions.

He added that the new functionality offered with Release 3.0 better meets the needs of Alcatel-Lucent’s enterprise and service provider customers.