InterSystems Ensemble is used in leading enterprises worldwide to develop and integrate mission-critical applications, leverage previous software investments through composite applications, establish an enterprise service bus, or implement SOA initiatives. Organizations have chosen Ensemble to add value to existing applications with capabilities such as adaptable workflow managed by an extensible business rules engine, business activity monitoring and real-time access to messages stored in an embedded, SQL-compliant object database.

"Customers in multiple industries, including healthcare, financial services and telecommunications, are using Ensemble to build increasingly complex applications as they implement service-oriented architectures (SOAs) across the enterprise," said Paul Grabscheid, InterSystems Vice President of Strategic Planning. "They need the most advanced security, monitoring and Web services performance to execute their SOA strategies and that's what this rich, new feature set delivers."

Enabling Enterprise-Ready SOA
The enhancements in this release ensure that organizations can use Ensemble to develop highly reliable and secure applications for SOA infrastructures. Major enhancements in the new version of Ensemble include:

• WS-Security 1.1 - Ensemble security features have been augmented with support for the WS-Security 1.1 standard. Recognized industry-wide as a foundation for developing secure distributed applications and Web services, the WS-Security 1.1 standard specifies how to attach digital signatures, encryption headers and security tokens to SOAP messages. The standard is the top level of ratification within the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), enabling high-level security on an enterprise scale.
• Improved Web Services Performance - Ensemble now makes it possible to send messages in binary or binary-encoded XML formats within SOAP messages. This leads to significant improvements in Web services performance due to the reduced size of the SOAP message.
• Extended Monitoring for Composite Applications - Embedded tracking capabilities have been extended so that organizations can monitor Ensemble-based systems using third-party SNMP-based solutions and Windows Management Instrumentation that many are already using across the enterprise.
• HL7 Sequence Manager - Targeting healthcare-focused organizations, Ensemble now offers an HL7 Sequence Manager that allows users to reconstruct an intended message sequence should messages be received out of order and to merge sequences from several different originating applications into a single sequence stream that preserves relative message ordering. As a result, the reliability of HL7 interfaces is improved and the potential for miscommunication is reduced, especially in healthcare organizations with diverse information systems. These benefits are of special value in critical hospital settings.
• Extended Integration Protocol Support - Multiple new integration protocols are supported in this product release. Of special interest to many SOA-focused enterprises is the addition of support for ebXML, a family of XML-based standards sponsored by OASIS and UN/CEFACT. These standards are designed to provide an open XML-based infrastructure that enables the global use of electronic business information in the most interoperable, secure and consistent manner possible.

"We are extremely pleased to deliver these enterprise-scale capabilities to our worldwide customer base as they implement innovative systems designed for optimal performance in the SOA environment," Grabscheid said.

About InterSystems
InterSystems Corporation is a global software technology leader with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and offices in 22 countries. InterSystems provides innovative products that enable fast development, deployment, and integration of enterprise-class applications. InterSystems CACHÉ® is a high performance object database that makes applications faster and more scalable. InterSystems Ensemble® is a rapid integration and development platform that enriches applications with new functionality, and makes them connectable. InterSystems HealthShare™ is a platform that enables the fastest creation of an Electronic Health Record for regional or national health information exchange. InterSystems DeepSee™ is software that makes it possible to add embedded real-time business intelligence in transactional systems, enabling better operational decisions.