AmberPoint announced today the latest release of its governance software for managing and securing services-based applications.

AmberPoint 5.0 introduces new capabilities that reduce the complexity of evolving services-based applications by providing greater end-to-end governance, improved management control, and an enhanced user interface. The new release also extends management visibility to message flows across all tiers of the SOA stack, including client applications, application servers, Web pages, Web applications, middleware, legacy systems, and back-end databases.

Among other features, AmberPoint 5.0 includes the following policy management policy capabilities:

Customizable library includes pre-built policies for load balancing, failover, versioning, smart-routing, logging, and security.

Automatic policy provisioning using attributes rather than hardwiring policies to individual services means users can assign policies to types of services.

Policy viewer enables users to see which services have which policies, which policies are in use with which services, and the status of each policy.

Built-in roles for controlling access to the system limit views to critical data.

AmberPoint 5.0 also features a library of security policies, support for security standards such as WS-Security and SAML, and tighter integration with third-party security systems including LDAPs and Tivoli Access Manager.

The new system also provides a graphical interface for defining security policies, and automatically discovers the services recorded in a UDDI registry as well as the policies associated with those services.

New exception management capabilities include a central, Web-based facility that provides access to distributed service logs; a message search capability based on message content, time of arrival, message type, or client credentials; and filtered logging that provides fine-grained control of how much data is logged.

Finally, AmberPoint 5.0 also offers new features to aid in the management and monitoring of complex services-based systems by providing for context-sensitive navigation across management disciplines, including service-level management, exception management, and lifecycle management. Users can drill through for greater detail while maintaining context. All common policies and management tasks are accessible through a Web-based user interface, eliminating the need for a fat client.