SOA: The Business Behind The Hype

At its core, SOA is an architectural philosophy focused on flexibly linked, business process-oriented software components that leverage Web standards and services. It’s the latest evolution in the ever-shifting IT landscape. Major software makers, including SAP and Oracle, have made SOA design the foundation of their latest application suites. But because SOA is such an all-encompassing idea, it’s prone to a broad interpretation. A recent Aberdeen Group survey found that 90 percent of respondents said they have or are adopting SOAs in their business.

Analyst Ron Schmelzer of ZapThink, a research firm that specializes in SOA topics, waves off such grandiose statistics. SOA momentum is gaining, but serious SOA projects are still at the early end of the adoption curve. Schmelzer estimated that perhaps 100 textbook SOA case-study projects were carried out last year.

“Anybody who is trying to do SOA is realizing that it’s a lot more involved than they might have thought,” Schmelzer said. “It’s pretty easy to put a Web services interface on anything. But to actually change the way you build applications so the services can consume those applications, well, that involves changing the way people build applications.”

“What would compel somebody to select one of [the pure-plays] when the big guys are adding features and acquiring companies constantly?” ZapThink’s Schmelzer said. “Companies just don’t like risk, so they’re first and foremost going to their existing technology providers.”

Read more at: CRN

Cisco bolsters SOA with Reactivity buy

“The AON platform movement hasn’t yet resulted in as much market traction as originally supposed,” says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. “It’s possible that this acquisition can give Cisco the kick in the pants it needs to effectively take advantage of a growing opportunity for management of XML and Web services traffic.”

Read more at: InfoWorld

Cisco Systems buys Reactivity in SOA networking play

Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, said the acquisition may help SONA gain traction that has so far eluded it.

“Specifically, Reactivity adds robust security and policy management capabilities to the Cisco platform where it was sorely lacking,” Schmelzer said. “Indeed, it seems that the SONA platform movement hasn’t yet resulted in as much market traction as originally supposed, and so it’s possible that this acquisition can give Cisco the kick in the pants it needs to effectively take advantage of a growing opportunity for management of XML and Web Services traffic.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Cisco to acquire Reactivity for $135 million

Reactivity has policy management and threat management capabilities, and I think Cisco is going to benefit from that,” said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with Baltimore, Md.-based research firm ZapThink. “They don’t have a standalone XML firewall product, but they have XML firewall capabilities.”

Read more at: SearchSecurity

IBM: SOA appliances selling like ‘gangbusters’

As the developer of the original DataPower technology, Kuznetsov might be expected to toot his own horn, but Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, says this success story isn’t hype, the newly christened IBM products really are “selling like gangbusters.”

“The DataPower set of appliances seem to be fitting very well into the overall WebSphere product line,” the analyst said. “The products are addressing specific point problems around the manipulation of XML and other SOA-related artifacts in environments where simply throwing more iron or app servers around won’t solve the problem. This is why DataPower is part of the WebSphere line and not in a hardware group. Basically, it’s a hardware form-factor solving software issues. As such, the IBM folks are finding a lot of application for the products and selling it like gangbusters.”

The success highlights the role appliances from all vendors are playing in SOA implementations.

“In general, many of the hardware vendors have the same general approach as DataPower, hardware appliances that are solving software problems, and as such, the space as a whole is maturing,” Schmelzer said. “Many of the vendors in the market are seeing a maturation of their customers and as such purchases are less and less of the proof of concept type and more of the in production real-time system type.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Reactivity Unveils Appliances For XML Networking

Ron Schmelzer, analyst for ZapThink LLC, said appliances to help the performance and security of XML data traffic has gained traction in the market since IBM’s acquisition last October of Datapower.

Reactivity has built “compelling” products for organizations that need a mechanism for automating the configuration of a system for different data types, Schmelzer said. While the company’s technology raises the bar for other vendors in the space, if demand continues to grow, then it’s likely other appliance vendors will follow suit, especially IBM. The latter company recently announced data handling capabilities in the Datapower XI50 appliance.

“So, (Reactvity) has interesting stuff that points at the continued evolution of the space, but nothing that can’t be easily reproduced by competitors if the market starts to demand that,” Schmelzer said.

Read more at: CMP / VarBusiness

IBM focuses on security in launch of SOA appliances

Besides the security gateway, IBM also released the WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance X150 and the WebSphere DataPower Accelerator XA35. Beyond re-branding, neither of the two products contained any major changes from the original DataPower hardware, Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for ZapThink LLC, said. Instead, IBM has focused its efforts since acquiring DataPower on SOA security.

“People are experiencing more pain handling security,” Schmelzer said.

Such a heavy demand within a network places a strain on servers, which also handle other chores. So it makes sense to have a dedicated appliance for security, Schmelzer said.

With the addition of DataPower, IBM is hoping to change customers’ perception of the WebSphere brand, which is associated with software.

Read more at: TechWeb / CMPIBM focuses on security in launch of SOA applia

IBM rechristens DataPower SOA appliances

Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC., said the integration between Tivoli and the DataPower products may not be totally seamless.

“IBM is saying that the XS40 Security Gateway can be integrated with Tivoli, but they’re not saying that it integrates with Tivoli out of the box,” the analyst cautioned. “I’m sure it requires some integration effort. But that being said, the DataPower boxes have long supported common management standards, so that integration shouldn’t be very difficult.”

ZapThink’s Bloomberg, who is not a fan of defining SOA in terms of software, let alone hardware products, still said the IBM DataPower combination does have a place in the architecture, especially where security is concerned.

“As for what the appliances can add to an SOA implementation,” Bloomberg said, “the core of any SOA implementation are the services that abstract underlying data and application functionality. For those services to be loosely coupled, it’s important for them to be fully secure and managed, and to meet the service-level agreements set out for them. The DataPower boxes offer both security and performance benefits that can help services meet these SLAs.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

IBM buys bolster net mgmt. offerings

DataPower’s XML processing technology will help IBM fill gaps in its broad SOA platform, according to Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink. DataPower’s XML products – the XI50 Integration Device, which streamlines SOA infrastructures; the XA35 XML Accelerator, which offloads XML processing; and the XS40 XML Security Gateway, which helps provide message-level Web-services security – will be added to IBM’s WebSphere brand and could help it compete with similar offerings from Cisco Application-Oriented Networking initiative.

Read more at: NetworkWorld

IT companies are hooking up like divorcees at a Vegas wedding chapel

The ZapThink guys have it right that this is only the second inning (given the weather, it can’t be too soon for baseball metaphors) of a nine-inning outing of SOA components and supplier consolidation.

Read more at: ZDnet