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SOA: Even More Consolidation is on the Way
Big news over the last few months was Software AG’s acquisition of WebMethods. There has been a steady stream of acquisitions in the SOA space, especially by the majors. IBM and Oracle have had a strategy of acquisition of companies in the SOA space in play for some time. The result is that top-tier vendors have put together product suites that are comprehensive across most SOA feature sets.
A report from the Butler Group thinks that consolidation in the SOA space isn’t over. But the current move to consolidate is less motivated by technology as it is to gain customers and increase market share.
Over the last couple of years the benefits of SOA have been well publicized. Benefits include reduced cost of integration, increased asset reuse, and increased business agility. Vendors have seized on the technology and have executed on their strategies. And now customers have become more savvy about what SOA is and they are finally beginning to buy into the vision.
In the Butler Group report vendors were evaluated over 400 feature points across eight categories of SOA importance: quality of service, messaging, standards, transformations, adapters and connectors, orchestration, business rules, and integrated development environment. The Butler Group report reviewed thirteen vendors and specifically named the top three SOA vendors as Oracle, TIBCO, and IBM.
Other vendors such as Sun, Cape Clear, Progress, and JBoss were cited as having note-worthy products, but the report noted that these products are more targeted in their offerings and have more limited coverage.
The report notes that vendors are targeting their SOA products at customers at the the highest end and having the most complex environments. Sales among high-end customers tend to be very high value and low volume, and sales in that market range are sure to saturate. In two to three years time, vendors will probably need to repackage and re-target their offerings towards medium-sized companies. Key to migration of sales that target the small and mid-size companies will be the need to retool software so that is much easier to deploy, use and administer.
