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March 20, 2006The Emerging SOA Platform Market
When announcing the acquisition of Fuego, Alfred Chuang, Chairman and CEO of BEA Systems, Inc. claimed that now BEA is "the only company to offer a unified SOA-based platform to integrate business processes, applications, and legacy environments."
Sorry, but not by a long shot Alfred. This is still an early market, but there are a number of contenders from different camps. First, the integration vendors. We’re essentially down to Tibco and webMethods, along with some niche players. They do all of the above. Both are repositioning their offerings as SOA platforms, now that EAI is so passé.
Then there are the platform vendors – IBM, SUN, Oracle, along with BEA. They all have development and integration platforms. SOA requires both, although the integration. These vendors have some advantages including company size and installed base. And they are all taking SOA very seriously. In this case, I’m not seeing slow moving dinosaurs waiting for upstarts to come and eat their lunch. They’re all over SOA.
And then there are the upstarts – the pure plays. And there are many of them. What pure plays often do best is innovate in the market. Many of the pure plays focus on certain aspects of the platform, such as the registry and governance, or testing, or development. Also, you’re going to find here that some of these pure plays are now calling themselves composite application platforms. Some are calling themselves SOA platforms. Seems to be more terminology than technology that makes this so. In a recent webinar, Steve Craggs referred to the whole space as an SOA Ecosystem which I think is a very good description of how companies will actually move forward in creating their SOA in an incremental and evolutionary way.
Above All calls themselves a composite application platform, and focuses on how to create and manage composite applications. Above All can expose an application interface so it looks and acts like a web service, and can abstract underlying services into higher level services.
Recently I spoke with Creative Science Systems, which has a server that can handle both Java and .net without code changes, along with an ESB, orchestration, and an adapter generator. But no registry, governance or BAM.
The SOA Ecosystem requires other capabilities including security, testing, and all the other things required to bullet proof enterprise applications. These “holes” will continue to be an opportunity for the smaller players. At this point, this is still an emerging market, which means as long as SOA remains a hot topic everyone and anyone will use it to describe their product offerings. But the operative word in SOA is architecture. That means planning and designing first - then figuring out which products fit into the architecture. Despite the many marketing claims, do not expect to buy your SOA as a shrink wrapped solution or a single install.
Posted by bethgb at 02:43 PM in
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I work for BEA, in the SOA consulting practice, but I don't speak for them. This is my viewpoint.
"That means planning and designing first - then figuring out which products fit into the architecture. Despite the many marketing claims, do not expect to buy your SOA as a shrink wrapped solution or a single install. "
I don't think that was Alfred's point, and it's quite a reach to suggest that it is. If you look at any of BEA's published and publicly available collateral on SOA, it suggests exactly what you're saying -- SOA, above all, is not primarily about technology or products, it's about discipline and focus around architecture, governance, and IT/business alignment. Having said this, we're still a software vendor, so we think we can help save you time & money with our software.
If you want to critique BEA's approach and stance on SOA, this could be a fruitful discussion, but I wouldn't start this by quoting a sound bite about an aquisition as the beginning and end of BEA's story.
Posted by: Stu Charlton at March 21, 2006 10:05 PM
I don't know if you read the other 2 posts about Alfred's comments, but they definitely were not a critique on BEA's stance on SOA. I used Alfred's comments as a launching point to comment on the state of the market. Alfred said that BEA is the only company to offer a unified SOA platform. So first I deleved into what an SOA platform was, which is also being called a composite application platform, then I delved into what unified means when SOA is supposed to encompass all platforms, then I looked into the competition. Haven't even begun to comment on BEA's SOA strategy. Was just using this somewhat overblown statement as a launching point into the state of the industry.
Posted by: Beth Gold-Bernstein at March 21, 2006 10:20 PM
Beth, Yes I did read them, and I thought it was a useful discussion, and realized you were using his soundbite as a launchpoint point, and think that's completely fair, and worthwhile.
I just found your closing statement could be easily (mis?)read as suggesting that BEA's trying to position SOA as a shrink-wrapped, single-install solution -- which quite far what we're doing, notwithstanding our CEO's confidence in our capabilities. :-) One often reflects back to the opening statement when looking at a closing statement, so I don't think my interpretation is a far stretch.
Posted by: Stu Charlton at March 23, 2006 11:12 AM
Actually, the statement did seem to imply that BEA was offering a single platform solution. I see both Integration Platforms and Application Service Platforms evolving towards composite application platforms, or SOA infrastructures. So it is important to understand what this means in the evolution of the market, and what people should be looking when purchasing technologies.
BEA has done well competing against IBM in the application platform market, because it did a very good job capturing the hearts and minds of developers. Developers will need a great deal of help in moving into the new SOA paradigm, learning how to develop event driven applications and maximize reuse. BEA will do well to once again focus on helping developers to succeed with SOA.
Posted by: Beth Gold-Bernstein at March 23, 2006 12:30 PM
I thought Beth's original point was crystal clear and on point: The phrase "unified SOA platform" should not be taken as implying that anyone is ready yet to offer "SOA-in-a-box"--"X in a box" being a common marketing trope from vendors these days.
That's a useful piece of advice for buyers.
For someone who "work[s] for BEA ... but doesn't speak for them," Stu seems to being working awfully hard to willfully misunderstand this point.
Posted by: Colin Brayton at March 25, 2006 07:08 AM
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