Oracle acquires SOA management vendor

“Deep visibility into the components underlying SOA-based composite applications is a critical part of the SOA management story, and that’s what ClearApp brings to Oracle,” wrote Jason Bloomberg, a managing partner with ZapThink, in an e-mail.

However, Bloomberg commented that the acquisition raises more questions than it answers, noting that Oracle had already acquired a group of companies that develop similar products, such as Auptyma, BEA Systems, Confluent Software and Moniforce.

Bloomberg questioned how many management vendors Oracle must acquire before it has a coherent SOA management story, and he said that the company was essentially following a “Frankenstein” strategy by putting a lot of parts together and “hoping for lightning.”

“Will Oracle be able to take this cobbled-together story and compete both with the established incumbents like HP and IBM Tivoli, as well as focused players like Tidal Intersperse?” he asked. He added that Oracle has experience in assimilating acquired technologies and for taking care of customers that come along as a result.

“But every such acquisition sets the bar of success higher for them,” he observed.

Read more at: SD Times

Oracle Buys Oblix to Secure Web Services

ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said Oblix was a solid company because of its ID and Web services management, which it picked up from its acquisition of Confluent Software a year ago. But Oblix never gained on companies like SOA Software and AmberPoint in the Web services management space.

Now Bloomberg is curious if Oracle will use Oblix to flesh out its service-oriented architecture (SOA) (define) line.

“This move by Oracle begs the question: was there something wrong with Oblix’ WSM capabilities, or does Oracle not understand how vital WSM is in an overall SOA product strategy?” Bloomberg said. “The jury is still out on whether Oracle can truly put together a coherent SOA strategy that will be competitive with the likes of IBM, BEA Systems and Microsoft.”

Read more at: InternetNews

Actional and Westbridge Merge To Provide Integrated SOA Security and Management

ZapThink estimates there was approximately $194.3 million in Web-services management revenue in 2003, a number that is expected to leap to $1.4 billion this year and to $8.8 billion by 2005, reflecting both the growing use of the software and the larger role of dominant players in selling it. ZapThink expects the market to reach $30.4 billion by 2010.

Read more at: Web Services Pipeline

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.

Case Study ZapNote: The Hartford UDDI

The Hartford is an early adopter of Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), in an industry that is leading the economy in the adoption of these technologies. Their insurance-industry focused initiative known as SEMCI supports requests for quotations for insurance to multiple carriers and gets a response in a standard ACORD format. The Hartford required the ability to roll out continuously changing versions of the Services they offered as a part of SEMCI. Further complicating this integration challenge was the fact that the responding carriers used different and constantly changing versions of the insurance industry standard ACORD messages.

To solve this many-to-many versioning problem, The Hartford turned to a UDDI registry to provide a metadata repository to enable integration in a continuously changing environment. The system works by leveraging a Web Services management platform to query the UDDI registry for an appropriate Service version at runtime, thus enabling the loose coupling between Service consumers and the applications they access.

As a result, The Hartford is now able to leverage their SOA to provide greater business agility to their users, and build a “future-proof” enterprise architecture to enable continual change.

Web-Services Market Poised For Consolidation

Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with XML research firm ZapThink, says Oblix “wasn’t the first company that came to mind” when he considered potential buyers of Web-services-management firms. Until now, identity management has been a system at the heart of the enterprise, controlling access to internal applications.

Now, Schmelzer says, Web services may be extended outside the company to business partners, provided they’re linked to an access-control system, such as Oblix’s NetPoint. The Oblix move may signal “another wave of consolidation” as identity-management vendors team up with Web-services management, he adds.

Read more at: InformationWeek

Oblix to Buy Confluent in Web Services Play

Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at research outfit ZapThink, said Oblix’ acquisition of Confluent is a departure from the norm for companies in the identity management and Web services management industries, though the synergies between the two make it an ideal arrangement.

“Most companies in these two markets have been happy with partnerships to complement one another’s strengths, but there’s no question the Oblix/Confluent combination promises to offer a more comprehensive management solution than any other one company might be able to offer,” he told internetnews.com.

Read more at: Internetnews.com

Oblix buys into Web services management

While HP and Computer Associates offer a broad suite of functions, Oblix’s software is more specific to identity management. The acquisition of Confluent by Oblix could indicate that interest in Web services management will increasingly come from a broad range of companies, beyond the traditional software management realm, according to Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at Web services research company ZapThink.

“If you asked me who I thought would buy Confluent, I would not have put Oblix on the list,” said Schmelzer. “I think we’ll start to see consolidation from different places (than traditional management providers).”

The Confluent software can help Oblix manage networking policies other than security and network access, Schmelzer noted. Confluent’s software could act as an extension to Oblix’s current software line with the ability to track whether a Web service application is available and whether it’s performing adequately, he said.

Read more at: CNet

Oblix Makes Service-Oriented Moves With Confluent Buyout

Asked his thoughts on such an acquisition, Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Waltham, Mass., said: “Identity-and-access management and Web services management are both critical enabling technologies for building and running service-oriented architectures (SOAs), so there is definitely synergy between the two areas.”

“Most companies in these two markets have been happy with partnerships to complement one another’s strengths. Nevertheless, if you think of an SOA as being based on policies, then identity management and Web Services management fit well together,” Bloomberg observed.

Meanwhile, Ronald Schmelzer, also of ZapThink, said, “If you think about where portals are heading, security in the form of Single Sign-On was key to make sure that users could get a single user experience even while traversing multiple portlets and portals in a session. This is what brought companies like Oblix and Netegrity to the fore with their identity management products.”

“However, as the portals manage increasingly more complex SOAs, they will have to control not just the security interfaces, but also the service interfaces themselves to make sure that the portals and composite applications get the functionality that they are expecting,” Schmelzer said. “So, as identity management vendors extend the notion of security management beyond just tightly-coupled systems to loosely coupled SOAs, they will need to work increasingly more closely with service-oriented management vendors.”

Read more at: eWeek

Confluent Web Services Management Platform 3.5 Reaches Everywhere

“Companies today are building service-oriented architectures (SOAs) often because their value chains rely upon patchworks of different technologies and protocols,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, Zapthink LLC. “Confluent’s ability to operate across multiple transport protocols and system platforms, combined with its broad offering of specialized agents for new and legacy applications, provides an excellent solution for companies that want to capitalize on the promise of Web services and build SOAs without compromising security or quality-of-service.”

Read more at: Confluent Press Release