The incredible shrinking SOA vendors

“The space is much smaller than it used to be,” observed Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. He added it’s likely to get smaller than it now. “This industry is consolidating very fast. We may find by the end of 2007 another two or three big deals.”

It’s possible that major players including Oracle Corp. and HP will be looking to fill out their SOA product lines. Schmelzer sees the management products of AmberPoint Inc. and the testing products of Mindreef Inc. as potential targets for Oracle. Those two, plus testing vendors Parasoft Corp. and iTKO Inc. might be on HP’s wishlist. As evidenced by the webMethods deal, even larger SOA vendors are not immune. “Who knows,” Schmelzer speculates, “maybe Oracle will pick up Tibco.”

Getting to the bottom line he says, “It’s looking less and less likely that strong independent companies will stay independent.”

The end of this year might also look a little like “Back to the Future” in Schmelzer’s view.

Read more at: SearchWebServices

SOA Software Announces Industry First ESB Federation Product

Industry analysts agree that large enterprises will inevitably have multiple different ESBs from different vendors deployed in production. SOA Software’s ESB Federation solution ensures that these disparate platforms enforce and implement centrally defined policies and that they can seamlessly interoperate to provide a reliable, high-performance, secure messaging environment.

“Enterprise Services Buses have been painted as the sole infrastructure solution necessary to implement Service-Oriented Architectures,” said Ronald Schmelzer, ZapThink, LLC. “However, the reality is that ESBs represent only one type of additional infrastructure that must be integrated if they are implemented in a disparate, proprietary fashion. By building a mechanism by which companies can federate and consolidate their disparate ESB implementations, SOA Software is aiming to bring the industry closer to the vision of truly loosely-coupled, composable and abstracted services that move us away from integrating islands of IT functionality.”

Read more at: SOA Software Press Release

New ESB Federation integrates multiple platforms

“Enterprise Services Buses have been painted as the sole infrastructure solution necessary to implement Service-oriented Architectures,” says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst, ZapThink. “However, the reality is that ESBs represent only one type of additional infrastructure that must be integrated if they are implemented in a disparate, propriety fashion. By building a mechanism by which companies can federate and consolidate their disparate ESB implementations, SOA Software is aiming to bring the industry closer to the vision of truly loosely-coupled, composable and abstracted services that move us away from integrating islands of IT functionality.”

Read more at: Application Development Trends

SOA Software buys Blue Titan

SOA Software is on track to become the first $100 million vendor with an SOA-specific offering, says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at research firm ZapThink. “SOA Software was already strong in the areas of security, management and runtime governance, while Blue Titan brings enterprise-class mediation to the fold,” he says.

Combined, the two vendors aim to provide offer a platform-neutral SOA infrastructure that can work with enterprise service bus (ESB) products from vendors such as BEA Systems, IBM, Tibco and webMethods.

“Platform neutrality is an important factor here, because companies are finding that when they take the platform/ESB approach to SOA infrastructure, they still need a way to handle mediation among various platforms and integration technologies — middleware for their middleware,” Bloomberg says. With the Blue Titan purchase, SOA Software’s platform can be tied to whatever ESB or other integration infrastructure is already in place at an enterprise, he says.

Read more at: NetworkWorld

SOA Software Acquires Blue Titan

“The platform neutrality is an important factor here because companies are finding that when they take the platform/ESB approach to SOA infrastructure, they still need a way to handle mediation among various platforms and integration technologies–middleware for their middleware, if you will,” said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink, in Cambridge, Mass. “The only way out of this Catch-22 is to implement a scalable, enterprise-class mediation/management/security solution along with whatever ESBs or other integration infrastructure is already in place. That’s just what SOA Software has put together.”

Read more at: eWeek

Making Sense of SOA Governance, Service Lifecycle Management, Registries & Repositories

The Service-oriented architecture (SOA) marketplace is experiencing substantial flux, as enterprises hammer out their SOA initiatives, and vendors position their offerings to meet their customers’ needs. One particularly dynamic corner of this broader market is the SOA governance segment. The vendors in the SOA governance space actually position themselves into one or more of the following market niches: registry/repository products, policy management tools, Service lifecycle management platforms, or SOA governance tools. Even though these segments are in flux, they all share a core capability: the ability to manage the metadata that form the lifeblood of every SOA implementation.

2005 a Record-Setting Year for LogicLibrary

ZapThink, LLC said Logidex improves efficiency and reuse of assets across an organization.

Read more at: Business Wire

LogicLibrary Logidex: Platform for SOA Governance

Logidex 4.0 is a collaborative software development asset management solution that gives organizations the ability to identify, manage and govern the design, development and consumption of Services as part of a Service-Oriented Architecture initiative. Through its support for the UDDI Web Services publication and discovery standard, coupled with its integration with Blue Titan’s Network director product, Logidex provides a SOA governance platform that supports the entire SOA lifecycle.

Blue Titan Software Announces Services Networking Vision

“Blue Titan continues to innovate ahead of the market for services infrastructure solutions with their services networking approach,” said Ronald Schmelzer, Senior Analyst at ZapThink LLC. “Services networking, with its focus on decoupling in the network via policy-based mediation, enables widespread composibility, interoperability, and evolvability at enterprise scale.”

Read more at: TMCNet

Blue Titan and Service Integrity Partner to Layer Visibility into the Services Network

“The combination of Blue Titan’s Network Director SOA infrastructure software and Service Integrity’s SIFT SOA visibility offering provides a comprehensive solution for companies wishing to effectively and efficiently manage their SOA environments,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink LLC. “Linking Blue Titan’s run-time metadata and Service Integrity’s operational business intelligence is a natural way to fine tune SOA implementations.”

Read more at: Blue Titan Press Release