SOA Market Shapes Up

Progress on long-gestating soa standards and consolidation among SOA vendors would seem to confirm the obvious: Service-oriented architectures are becoming more real every day.

OASIS recently launched a new SOA standards effort, dubbed Open Composite Services Architecture (Open CSA), to give developers royalty-free access to SOA service descriptions and data-object specs. OASIS also ratified a new version of the Web Services Business Process Execution Language.

Vendors, too, are positioning themselves to ride the SOA wave. Software AG has acquired integration pioneer WebMethods for $546 million, instantly making it a major SOA contender alongside Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, TIBCO and others. Meanwhile, Iona Technologies has acquired LogicBlaze; the two share a strong focus on delivering open-source SOA products. --Andy Dornan, [email protected]