Cloud Computing Technologies Embrace AS4 Standard

August 17, 2011 Off By David
Grazed from PR Web.  Author: PR Announcement.

Drummond Group Inc., the trusted interoperability test lab and certification body, today announced its plans to conduct its first Drummond Certified™ AS4 Interoperability test in the first quarter of 2012. In addition to enabling interoperability for technologies such as cloud computing, AS4 is an emerging Internet messaging protocol that provides a standardized method for the secure and document-agnostic exchange of B2B payloads using Web Services from any location, anywhere in the world. Drummond Group’s AS4 interoperability testing is based on a proven test methodology developed to ensure that different products can work together to seamlessly exchange information…

AS4, an OASIS B2B messaging standard, was finalized by the OASIS ebXML Messaging Services (ebMS) Technical Committee. The intent and purpose of the development of AS4 was to define a simplified Conformance Profile of the ebMS v3.0 specification that would serve as a B2B on-ramp for Web Services document exchange.

"We are excited to see the growth in AS4 software development," says Rik Drummond, CEO of Drummond Group. "In spring 2007, Drummond Group invited a group of interested vendors to explore what Web Services B2B would look like based on their AS2 experience. Axway, Sterling Commerce, Cisco, Extol and others participated in those early conversations. After our initial work, Drummond Group handed the work over to OASIS in 2008 leveraging the ebMS 3.0 specification as a baseline. We look forward to facilitating the first AS4 interoperability test and certification."

Over the last several years, ebMS 3.0 has become a leading standard for Web services and provides necessary features to conduct B2B transactions, such as standardizing exception handling by defining acknowledgement receipts and errors messages, and supporting message choreographies. ebMS supports a broad set of features not all of which are required by typical integration scenarios. Therefore, OASIS developed AS4 as a lightweight ebMS profile with a core set of features.

Important Benefits of AS4:

  •     Cloud computing interoperability – a trend in today’s IT environment. Organizations are adopting it to solve many problems, provide new services faster and enable the cloud-based services which can achieve interoperability with the AS4 standard.
  •     Message security governed by WS-Security specifications along with support for payload compression
  •     Support for an AS2-like business Non-Repudiation Receipt
  •     Reception Awareness – just enough reliable messaging
  •     x.509 security tokens for signing/encryption; additional support for username/password tokens for access to message pull channels
  •     Support for AS2’s synchronous and asynchronous document push choreographies
  •     Support for the ebMS v3 document pull choreography which is not available with AS2
  •     Availability for markets where 24×7 Internet connectivity and IP addressability is not available
  •     Client accessibility to multiple document pull channels (priority, document types, etc.)
  •     AS4 defines a "light client" for deployment to IT and cost challenged endpoints

For more information about the AS4 standard or the new AS4 Interoperability test, please visit the Drummond Group website or email info2(at)drummondgroup(dot)com.

Download an AS4 whitepaper: AS4 – A New Tool for your Toolbox

Register for AS4 Interop testing scheduled for early 2012. And, for additional information on Drummond Certified™ Interoperability testing, see http://www.drummondgroup.com/html-v2/testing.html

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