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Two big stories today. First Al Gore getting the Nobel Peace prize which both surprised and delighted me, and then Oracle making a bid for BEA - which did neither. This one has been circulating the rumor mill for quite a while now. Last month the chatter was becoming noiser and it seemed like the time was drawing nearer. However, even though the element of surprise was not present, this is still big news. BEA has issued a statement saying Oracle significantly unvalued the stock. While they will certainly negotiate over price, it seems like it's only a matter of time before BEA falls to acquisition. The writing has been on the wall for a while.

As SOA is slated to become the dominant enterprise platform over the next 5 - 10 years, it is not surprising that the big platform vendors are vying to own the platform. And once the price is right, the BEA stockholders are not going to complain much. In her blog, Elizabeth Book related the reaction of Neil Macehiter of the firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton. Macehiter feels that IBM is the winner here. "Suddenly, customers looking for a middleware backbone that’s independent of their applications suite are left with only one credible candidate." Well there's actually two - TIBCO and Progress (Actional ESB and governance). (There were over 35 independent vendors when I started covering the integration middleware market a dozen years ago.)

But the bottom line is when a market consolidates to the point where only the big players are left, the real loser is market innovation. The small pure play vendors tend to find market niches and provide sometimes disruptive innovations. The large players tend move much more slowly, even when they are selling business agility ;-).

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Posted by bethgb at 02:34 PM in Industry News | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us

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