SOA Software Provides Window into Services Management
Type: Competitive Intelligence Brief
Analyst: S. Willett
Report Date: April 4, 2005
Module: Application Infrastructure
ID: CIR13517 |
Current Perspective: Positive/Neutral
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: Moderate |
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Summary
Event Summary
April 4, 2005 -- SOA Software (formerly Digital Evolution), the leading provider of comprehensive SOA and Web services management, security, and governance solutions, announced the addition of the industry’s first registry-based dashboard to its award winning Service Manager. Through real-time alerts and live charts, SOA Software’s registry-based dashboard dramatically improves enterprise customers’ ability to discover, manage, and troubleshoot Web services.
Analytical Summary
• Current Perspective: Slightly positive on SOA Software’s release of its dashboard as it brings its SOA Management platform into a stronger position via other pure plays with a few differentiators.
• Vendor Importance: High to SOA Software as it needs to build awareness and mindshare with an improved version of its SOA management software
• Market Impact: Moderate on the market, as this signals a powerful new player in the SOA management space, and will cause integration and application server players to look at this product for possible partnership. Many of the integration and pure plays will also likely consider adding some of these features in the future.
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Perspective
Current Perspective: Positive/Neutral
We are taking a slightly positive stance on SOA Software’s announcement of a Web-based graphical dashboard for its Web Services/SOA management product. Although not unique in the pure play SOA Management space, the dashboard will help it compete against Actional and Amberpoint. The firm has some solid differentiators as well. The Web-based dashboard is able to graphically display performance metrics on services, groups of services, or response by users or groups of users. Metrics can be displayed against SLAs and according to business functions (e.g., related to a certain financial service being offered). This makes the product much more practical for general IT staff and could even be used by business users. SOA Software has a differentiator in its registry-based approach, which allows administrators to build extensions to UDDI that specify rules and policies around security, failover and load balancing, prioritization, SLAs, content-based routing, and other functions. The firm has a number of features for Web Services management. There is a proxy agent that provides load balancing into services, as well as a more direct agent that sits directly in front of a service built on an application server. The company provides its own message-based encryption and its own authentication and can call out to third-party authentication from Tivoli and CA Netegrity. Another differentiator is SOA’s tight integration with IBM’s WebSphere application server and Tivoli. This gives it an advantage in IBM accounts and could make it a strong partner of IBM and even an acquisition target in the future.
While this is a welcome feature, graphical dashboards are common in the SOA management pure play space and competitors such as Actional have had them for a while (over a year). Also, SOA’s agents that plug directly into an application server-based Web Service are able to offer little in the way of true load balancing and failover. It is unclear why users would want to use this mixed in with the independent agents. In general, SOA management is a crowded market ripe for consolidation. HP’s purchase of Talking Blocks and Oracle’s purchase of Oblix (which had purchased Confluent, another SOA Management firm), mean that bigger players will already be in this market. BEA and webMethods plan to increase their functionality in this area as well.
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Positives and Concerns
Competitive Positives
• SOA Software changes its name (it was formerly called Digital Evolution) and announces a highly graphical dashboard to its Web Services management product, Services Manager, which it acquired from Flamenco Networks. The firm, which also has a Web Services oriented VPN Solution, is attempting to gain mindshare in this small, but crowded market. The addition of the dashboard puts it in the same league, feature-wise, as Actional, Amberpoint, and others, who also have SLA and graphical console features.
• The Web-based dashboard is able to graphically display performance metrics on services, groups of services, or response by users or groups of users. Metrics can be displayed against SLAs and according to business functions (e.g., related to a certain financial service being offered). This makes the product much more practical for general IT staff and could even be used by business users. SOA’s big differentiator is its ability to search services and configure metrics based on its UDDI registry.
• In fact, SOA’s registry-based approach provides a handy way to organize administration of service. The firm has designed extensions to UDDI that allow administrators to associate services with rules and policies around security, failover and load balancing, prioritization, SLAs, content-based routing, and other functions. The firm is submitting these extensions to be part of the UDDI standard.
• SOA Software includes a number of features for Web Services management. There is a proxy agent that provides load balancing into services, as well as a more direct agent that sits directly in front of a service built on an application server. The company provides its own message based encryption and its own authentication. It can also call out to third party authentication from Tivoli and CA Netegrity. The software has been designed for high performance. As noted, a wide variety of policies and rules can be applied to services to monitor performance and enforce SLAs.
• SOA has tight integration with IBM’s WebSphere application server and Tivoli. This includes agents directly in front of WebSphere Web Services and plug-ins to Tivoli’s user-based authentication. General monitoring information can also be sent directly up to Tivoli. This gives it an advantage in IBM accounts and could make it a strong partner of IBM and even an acquisition target in the future.
Competitive Concerns
• Graphical dashboards are common in the SOA management pure play space and competitors such as Actional have had them for a while (over a year).
• SOA Software’s extensions to UDDI may or may not be accepted as a formal standard.
• SOA’s agents that plug directly into an application server-based Web Service are able to offer little in the way of true load balancing and failover. It is unclear why users would want to use this mixed in with the independent agents.
• SOA management is a crowded market that is growing, but more slowly than many had predicted. It is ripe for consolidation. It is more than likely that SOA management will find its way either into ESB type products, or OpenView type systems management products in the future, making it difficult for pure plays to survive. Already, HP’s purchase of Talking Blocks and Oracle’s purchase of Oblix (which had purchased Confluent) give evidence of this consolidation.
• The company’s partnerships with IBM appear limited at the moment. IBM seems to be keeping a distance from all the players in this market.
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Recommended Actions
Recommended Vendor Actions
• SOA Software should continue to mix graphical displays in its dashboards, with tools to help administrators re-configure services and fix problems. The company should put in more “self-healing” features as well.
• The firm should continue to enhance the product with support for new WS-x type features (WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Notification, etc.).
• SOA’s efforts to fit in tightly with IBM’s suite of products are a good idea, but it should expand this level of support to either WebLogic or Oracle’s 10g platform.
Recommended Competitor Actions
• Competitors in the pure-play SOA Management space (Blue Titan, Actional, Amberpoint, webMethods, etc.) should continue to improve their graphical dashboards, and should link them with tools to correct problems. More self-healing features should also be put in.
• These players should continue to take an agnostic approach, attempting to run on both .Net and J2EE, and to feed into a variety of third-party consoles. Also, a wide variety of third-party user-based authentication should be supported.
• Competitors in the application server and integration spaces should build their own Web Services management and monitoring functions into their suites, including the ability to monitor and manage services built on other platforms.
Recommended End User/Customer Actions
• End users should consider SOA Software’s Service Manager as a credible way to provide availability and monitoring of services running on disparate platforms. The new dashboard provides a way to display performance against SLAs and informal performance goals.
• End users should look at SOA management separately from other IT monitoring and management functions for the time being, as it will require its own consoles and specialists due to the novelty of the methods and technology. Also, configuration functions (i.e., security, load balancing, etc.) are intricately tied to this software, unlike other monitoring/systems management technology.
• Eventually, however, SOA management, particularly the monitoring aspect, needs to be put in a framework with other systems management operations.
• End users should wait for the various WS-x standards (Reliable Messaging, WS-Eventing), to mature a bit before implementing them.
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