Web Services Management

Of all the markets that the rush to capitalize on Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) spawned, the space known as Web Services Management (WSM) is likely the most turbulent. Marked by a large number of new entrant vendors and cutthroat competition for a steadily increasing number of customers, WSM products have come to offer a core set of functionality as well as many of the key capabilities necessary for companies to build and run SOAs.

In spite of significant press and early adopter attention to the vendors in this space, there have been too many vendors chasing too few deals, and as a result, most WSM vendors have reconfigured their product and marketing strategies at least once, as they seek the right niche to build the customer traction so critical to their survival. As a result, the WSM market is filled with short-term fragmentation, as vendors jockey for position, and longer-term consolidation, as incumbent vendors make strategic acquisitions and build their WSM capabilities as the market matures.

This report provides WSM vendors with the perspective they need to focus their market and product strategies for the next one to two years, and it illustrates the complete WSM landscape for end-users, enabling them to understand which vendors will be able to provide the capabilities they require, both now and as they build out their Service-Oriented Architectures.

ZapThink: Web Services Management Market Set To Expand Dramatically; Growth Tempered by Fragmentation of Market Leading to Dominance by Incumbent Vendors

“Companies are coming to understand that Web Services Management is critical for both the operation of Web Services as well as SOAs,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst with ZapThink. “As a result, vendors in this space are finding customer traction by offering a range of different capabilities, from monitoring, to SOA enablement, to metadata management.”

Read more at: BusinessWire

IONA Simplifies SOAs for Programmers

As a smaller competitor on the integration front, IONA is looking for their share of the pie, according to ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer.

“Their play versus IBM and TIBCO, etc., is that they are focused on the app server-less broker-based Service-Oriented Integration play, and they have credibility there,” Schmelzer told internetnews.com. “Of course, their legacy [Common Object Request Broker Architecture (define)] customers at times can weigh them down as well. But, in any case, it seems that their Web Services/SOA practice is really growing.”

Read more at: internetnews.com

British Telecommunications Plc Calls on AmberPoint for Web Services Management

“BT is the latest addition to AmberPoint’s list of partners and customers, showing that AmberPoint’s products are gaining traction in the Web services marketplace,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink. “The fact that BT has chosen to implement AmberPoint solutions shows two things: first, that Web services technologies address real-world business needs now, and second, that AmberPoint’s Web services management solutions meet the carrier-grade quality requirements of today’s enterprises.”

Read more at: Amberpoint Press Release

SOAP 1.2 Passage Snagged By IP Issues

Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst for XML and Web services research firm Zapthink, doesn’t think the companies are out to stymie the standard — just a little power posturing.

“In my opinion, any company in Epicentric’s and webMethod’s position would realize that asserting an IP claim on part of a proposed standard will prevent that particular IP from making its way into the standard. If that IP is critical to the development of the standard, then the standard might be stymied. If not, then the standards body would have to find another approach to solving the particular issue. In either case, nobody would pay that vendor any licensing fees so that they could use the standard. Since it’s not in the vendor’s best interests to stymie the standard, and there’s no revenue to be gained by deflecting the standard body, then why would a vendor actually take such an action? “

Read more at: Internetnews.com