CORBA has experienced tremendous growth since its introduction nearly 25 years ago as an open industry standard for architecting and implementing high performance distributed software systems. Now considered a classic among standards-based computing methodologies, CORBA was the hot new technology and wildly popular among companies building solutions and applications during the mid- to late-90s for the very same reasons it remains so vital to system architecture today. It allows organizations to build highly performant, highly scalable systems in a platform- and language-neutral fashion.
Since that time, a number of newer technologies have brought different types of solutions to the market, each promising to be the answer to everyone’s problems. As IT organizations adopt these alternatives, they often realize that bringing their solution to market is actually a lot more complex than originally made out. While getting up and running may be a fairly straightforward task, dealing with the intricacies of ensuring correct qualities of service can pose significant delays and unplanned expenses.
As all businesses and agencies are unique and each part of an organization has different needs, there is now a general acceptance that no one solution can solve all problems. Rapid development may be important to one team, while performance is critical to another. What is important is that you can build and manage an ecosystem of different technologies that act as one and gain the benefits of each. That’s why cross-technology integration solutions have become so popular, and why products like Micro Focus Artix® is a key component for many of our customers.
CORBA technology is perfect for highly-regulated industries, among others, such as utilities, banking and government environments, where it is continually deployed in demanding environments, such as aerospace and military control applications. Moreover, if you talk to our customers, who represent the bulk of Fortune 1000 companies, CORBA is very much a part of their mission critical systems today.
THE HIGH COST OF RIP AND REPLACE
While there is continual change in the entire IT space, including application integration, there is clearly no “one size fits all” solution set, and newer does not always mean better. Why incur the high risks and costs of deploying something new and untested within your infrastructure when you already have perfectly valid, stable existing systems that perform perfectly
Our longstanding and new customers know that they can deploy a CORBA solution and rely on it for decades. That superior reliability coupled with outstanding performance is exactly why our aerospace clients use CORBA applications in their satellite systems and logistics applications. They know that, not only will CORBA work as part of a wider IT ecosystem with different technologies, operating systems, hardware platforms and programming languages, but they can rely upon it to run for decades without fail.
Sure, there are multiple market options and approaches to developing, connecting and deploying complex applications, and organizations must do what’s best to meet their objectives. However, the question businesses and agencies planning for 2015 and beyond must ask is: Do I want a new programming language or systems architecture just because it’s being touted as the latest and greatest solution to hit the market – or would I rather modernize while reducing risk by leveraging my existing investments, CORBA included?
We’re finding that the answer for many forward-thinking organizations is an easy one: We’re sticking with CORBA as it’s truly been battle-tested and meets or even exceeds our needs for scalability, security, performance and deployment flexibility. Indeed, three quarters of the world’s financial institutions rely on Orbix®, the world’s most widely deployed enterprise CORBA solution. The Micro Focus CORBA solutions are also used by 80% of French mobile operators, half of the top 50 and eight of the top 10 U.S. government system integrators.
MICRO FOCUS CORBA SOLUTIONS ARE ROCK SOLID BUT NOT STANDING STILL
Through the acquisition of IONA and OpenFusion assets, Micro Focus is now the home of CORBA, with the world’s leading experts building and delivering solutions to continually drive improvement. With Micro Focus’s unique knowledge of mature markets and understanding of how to extract additional value from previous investments, CORBA and the organizations that use it to meet even the most demanding requirements have a long and bright future ahead.
We are continually investing in CORBA and working to make it easier to use. Whether you are developing applications with CORBA directly or utilizing Orbix®, VisiBroker®, Orbacus®, Artix® or OpenFusion®, we want to know what you want and need as we look to add and evolve CORBA features and functionality to meet the needs of today’s developers, system architects and winning enterprises across the globe. We invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section below, our community site or contact us directly.
