Are SOA Vendors an Endangered Species?

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April 17, 2007

Are SOA Vendors an Endangered Species?

Large fish are eating up all the smaller fish -- and that's our loss.

That's the view of Dave Linthicum, who recently took a look across the SOA vendor landscape, and is a little concerned about what he sees -- or is seeing less of.

Dave, who has been part of plenty of vendor acquisitions himself, wonders if with all the acquisitions that are going on, we are losing an innovative edge. "The number of organizations out there that are actually doing service-oriented architecture are diminishing," he said in a new podcast posted here at ebizQ. "This is not due to lack of interest in the space, or a failure of the technology... the larger players out there, the big stack guys, are actually purchasing SOA companies and taking them out of the market."

"Smaller and more innovative SOA vendors are quickly finding themselves as part of larger players," Dave explains. "There were probably three to four dozen acquired just in the last couple of years."

So what's wrong with larger players paying out megabucks for smaller specialized SOA companies? Doesn't that demonstrate how vibrant things are in this space? The problem is, Dave says, is that "most of the innovation, the interesting stuff, takes place among the startup companies." This is being lost as larger vendors take over, and absorb the smaller vendor's products and people into the bellies of their operations. Large vendors, of course, don't like to take risks, and are slow to adapt. Only small startups are in a position to take risks with new technologies and approaches.

Isn't this a problem that every generation has faced? Sure, but things are different today, Dave says, because it's much more difficult to take a company public, due to regulations. The only viable exit strategy for investors is selling the company to the highest bidder.

Managers and professionals need a lot of guidance in service oriented architecture, and large vendors aren't doing a good job of providing guidance, Dave says. "There are lots of things that need to be addressed currently in the SOA marketplace," he said. "I don't see vendors leading the way. As of now, I see them leading the hype. Lots of people are going out there and buying technology without having any idea how its going to fit within their enterprise."

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