Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst for SOA and Web services research firm ZapThink, said HP is making its play at the right time.

“It’s definitely not too late for HP to move into the SOA space in a big way,” Bloomberg told internetnews.com. “In fact, their timing is probably quite good, considering that the number of enterprises who are now considering SOAs has spiked over the last few months. It didn’t make sense for the likes of HP to offer a strong SOA story through last year, because they weren’t yet getting strong demand for such products from their customers.”

Bloomberg said SOAs have been on HP’s roadmap for OpenView for well over a year, as evidenced by the Talking Blocks acquisition.

“Now the time is right for HP, as well as CA, to move into leadership positions in the Web Services Management space — with IBM Tivoli not far behind,” he continued. “As for the small players — Actional, AmberPoint, Blue Titan, Digital Evolution, Flamenco Networks, Infravio, NetIQ, and Westbridge Technology — the clock is ticking.”

Read more at: InternetNews.com