Read more at: Application Development Trends]]> In the meantime, vendors in the Web services management arena have been playing a near-constant game of musical chairs. “There are a lot of vendors, and they’re all trying to figure out their niche,” explained Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at consultancy ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. “They’re all changing their story and moving around,” trying to figure out the most appropriate mix of features to meet customers’ needs.

Another big difference from even a year ago, noted ZapThink’s Bloomberg, is that “last year we saw soup-to-nuts functionality,” where every vendor implemented virtually every feature one could ever want in a management package. Now, however, some suppliers are starting to specialize in certain niches — managing or creating service-level agreements, for instance, or audit and version control. Some are targeting security as a core feature, while others are working to ensure that their management suites work with existing Web security leaders like VeriSign and Netegrity.

Read more at: Application Development Trends

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.]]> Key Points:

• The short term trend in the WSM market is primarily one of fragmentation. The longer term trend is to the SOAIF, as customers look to vendors to provide coordinated frameworks that offer not just management capabilities, but all the components needed to build, run, and manage SOAs.

• The opportunities for new entrants in the Web Services Management market will peak in 2004-2005, and drop off rapidly thereafter as incumbents move to consolidate the market.
• There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity for new entrants in the WSM space to achieve sufficient customer traction to establish themselves as successful WSM vendors.
• Companies building enterprise SOAs require SOA enablement capabilities, including dependency management, active routing, protocol translation, metadata management, and Service provisioning.

Table of Contents:

• I. Web Services Management: A Transitional Market
• II. State of the WSM Market
  • 2.1. Vendor Landscape
    • 2.1.1. SOA Enablement
    • 2.1.2. Web Services Security
    • 2.1.3. Business Management
    • 2.1.4. Web Services Testing and Diagnostics
    • 2.1.5. Web Services Configuration and Provisioning
    • 2.1.6. Metadata Management
    • 2.1.7. Business-to-Business Web Services Management
    • 2.1.8. Core Web Services Management
    • 2.1.9. Vendor Landscape Summary
  • 2.2. Customer environment
• III. Market Trends
  • 3.1. Market Numbers
• IV. The ZapThink Take
  • 4.1. Key notes
  • 4.2. Decision points
  • 4.3. Figures
  • 4.4. Tables

Download File

Read more at: TechWeb]]> The concept, however, is still in the beginning stages, with between 5 percent and 10 percent of large enterprises testing various technologies, according to market researcher ZapThink LLC.

“A lot of these announcements that HP is making are still well in advance of what customers will actually be using,” ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said. “This is a long-term strategy for HP in building their adaptive enterprise technology.”

Read more at: TechWeb

Read more at: InformationWeek]]> 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

Read more at: Internetnews.com]]> 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

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]]> 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

Read more at: SearchWebServices]]> “There are some specific needs for notification in grids that Microsoft and others didn’t want to consider,” said Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based ZapThink LLC. “So, basically, IBM had some priorities for their event messaging spec that weren’t priorities for Microsoft and others.”

So, what do all of these WS-related specifications mean to users? Not much, said Schmelzer, of ZapThink. “Our concern is that we’re seeing a little bit of a spec glut,” he said. “Customers don’t implement specs, they implement products.”

Schmelzer said that it can take a year or more before specifications find their way into software products. That’s true of WS-Eventing, which probably won’t make its debut in a product until Longhorn, the next version of Microsoft’s Windows, comes out in about 2006, he said.

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Read more at: CRN]]> Expect the Web services management market to gather more steam in 2004, as well as consolidate further, analysts and solution providers predict. Research firm ZapThink projects that the market will grow to $13 billion by 2007 from $35 million in 2003.

$13 Billion: Size of the Web Services Management market predicted by 2007 – Source: ZapThink.

Read more at: CRN