ZapThink LLC analyst Ron Schmelzer said the ESB market never attracted a lot of money in the first place and now that IBM, BEA and open source ESBs are entering the space, it leaves even fewer pickings for the companies that built the category. He added that ESBs seem to have lost some cache as IT shops grapple with the larger issues of building to a service-oriented design.

“The ESB term has turned out to be a real quagmire,” Schmelzer said. “It’s somewhat, but not really related to SOA. The real challenge of SOA is not that you need more messaging. Where customers really need help is in managing all the meta data around the services they’re creating.”

Meanwhile, Schmelzer argued that the change needs to happen rapidly.

“Vendors have to prove that they’re relevant to service-oriented architecture,” he said. “It can’t just be the same old stuff you’ve been selling for years in a repackaged form. What’s different about your product in the last six revolutions that’s different than it was for Web tier?”

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