Coming of Age

“There’s been an overall lull for IT spending, but Web services has been a bright spot,”
says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink, which forecasts sales of $4.4
billion in 2005 and $43 billion in 2010 for Web services and related technologies such
as identity management and Web services security.

Read more at: The Daily Deal

Grand Central Communications Announces Enhancements to Its Business Services Network

“By supporting a wider range of connectivity and security options based on
individual customers’ needs, Grand Central is making it even easier for more
companies to leverage integration as a service and adopt a service oriented
architecture,” said Jason Bloomberg, Zapthink analyst.

Read more at: Grand Central Press

Grand Central adds non-Internet connectivity

“Grand Central’s upgrade adds functionality and ease-of-use for their customers,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. “Specifically, the support for private-line connections provides their customers greater flexibility and security when using the network. Private lines offer greater security, reliability, and performance than the public Internet, and there will be certain customers who always require this higher level of service.

“The added support for Java, BPEL and AS/2 also offer various customers greater flexibility in how they use the network. In the case of Java and BPEL, customers have even greater control of the business processes that run on the Grand Central network,” Bloomberg said.

Read more at: InfoWorld

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