IBM’s SOA View Not Quite HP’s

Contrary to HP’s catch-up “SOA’s-still-a-prototype routine,” IBM is saying 4,500 of its customers have modeled their businesses around SOA. IBM puts what it calls the the SOA “opportunity” at $160 billion worldwide, but did find in a survey that users complain of a skills shortage, calling it the leading inhibitor to SOA.

As a result, the gang from Armonk/White Plains has created a 3D interactive game called Innov8 played with joysticks to
tempt people into visualizing how a SOA would affect different parts of the organization. Unofficial word is that IT managers’ teenagers can help their parents see the SOA opportunity through this innov8tive approach.

HP Discovers SOA

Deigning to dip its toe into shark-infested SOA waters, mighty Hewlett-Packard has decided for all of us that SOA is now ready to move beyond the prototype stage. I’m sure the tens of thousands of developers in every corner of the planet are relieved to know this. Must make the folks at IBM breathe easier, too, with HP apparently validating what Big Blue has been doing for about a decade.

HP says it won’t go it alone. It says Microsoft, Oracle, and even those Germans will be helping deliver the middleware (which is naturally the essence of SOA, dumbkopf!)

Where’s Tibco? Didn’t HP’s Mark Hurd just speak to the assembled masses at Tibco’s annual user group meeting? Wasn’t he all smiles that day? What’s going on here?

Informatica Enjoins; BO Responds

SOA’s not just the uber-heavyweights battling for enormous enterprise IT contracts. Before there was SOA there was web services, and data integration and business intelligence. Now two of the smaller but important pioneers have tangled. News has emerged that Informatica has won an injunction against Business Objects to prevent “proven, patented data transformation technology” from being used in BO’s Data Integrator.

The beef goes clear back to 2002. In April this year, a jury sided with Informatica.

Business Objects has already responded, saying bit “has been shipping an updated version of BusinessObjects Data Integrator XI Release 2 Version 11.7.2, that provides customers with additional deployment options and scalability and does not include the minor feature involved in the Informatica lawsuit.”

Wethinks this isn’t the last volley…

Can IBM SOA “Survive” Orlando?

All the bigshot Big Blue SOA guys will be in Orlando this week, as IBM stages its IMPACT 07 in the world of Disney. The six-day shindig (May 20-25) will for some reason feature “Survivor” producer and uber-cynic Mark Burnett as a featured speaker. How can the man who convinced America that scripted TV with unpaid actors is somehow reality convince hard-boiled IT manager types that SOA is real?

Guess we’ll have to go to Florida to find out. Oh yes, real speaker such as Blue’s Sandy Carter, Robert LeBlanc, Steve Mills,  and Tom Rosamilia are on the agenda, too. Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to SOA we go!

TIBCO Disses Software AG-WebMethods

The tightly bunched SOA vendors can be expected to grapple and punch like too many people crammed into an elevator. Should be fun to watch. Here’s some recent dissing of Software AG and WebMethods by TIBCO VP Ram Menon, writing in his “executive blog.”

Siemens Blitzes SOA Telephony

As many companies stutter-step about dipping their toes into the SOA waters, Siemens has blitzed ahead and reported that it’s delivering SOA-based apps into the telephony business.  The HiPath 8000 Assistant and HiPath 8000 Media Server  use Siemens OpenSOA foundation to ease integration with other apps and increase portability across different servers and operating systems. Siemens says that OpenSOA also provides “baseline service component capabilities–including presence, location, notification and collaboration capabilities–that enterprises can use to build new composite telephony apps in such areas as unified communications, unified message and call centers.”

OpenSOA components are built in Java and XML, and Siemens is clearly marching at the head of this parade.

“SOA Doesn’t Benefit Anyone”

Buried within the details of today’s Bear Stearns analyst actions report: “SOA does not appear to benefiting BEA, or anyone for that matter.”

What th”?!

I wonder how IBM, TIBCO, SAP, Oracle, Software AG, and for that matter, BEA feel about that?

What Is Up with BEA?

Is this company for sale or not? Does anyone want it? The latest report is that it is not for sale and its stock has been downgraded. So it took a little hit today (about 2%), and is holding steady with an OK market cap of $4.5 billion and a P/E ratio of 31.99. Modest for the tech industry.

Bottom-line is the stock has gone nowhere for five years now, and the sharks are circling in the SOA space pioneered by BEA. Big sharks like IBM and Oracle, and smaller sharks like TIBCO and Software AG/WebMethods. All sharks, though.

Sofa King Funny

Didja see the two contrite guys in Boston settling up with the local powers over their promotion-gone-awry for the Acqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon? The stunt may have backfired, but the cartoon is really funny, sneaking naughty stuff in without being loud or crass.

Less naughty but showing a similar semi-subversive sensibility, is the new “reality series” apparently underwritten by TIBCO. It’s called Greg the Architect, and so far has been really funny too, if not sofa king funny as Acqua Teen.

Check it out, and pass those cookies!

The TAO of SOA

Somebody said to me just the other day that SOA was a dull subject. This was a woman who said this, of course, and as Borat instructed us, hard to think with such small brain. Wait, I may be a woman, too…oh…

This is The SOABlog. You can’t buy a SOA, so can you sell one? Everybody seems to offer one these days.

You need a Virtual SOA, so you can’t have a real one? Are not all those white papers and conference talks and all that website copy real? Aren’t IBM, Oracle, SAP, BEA, TIBCO, Software AG, WebMethods (I mean Software AG) real?

The TAO of SOA is mysterious, yes. This is a fascinating topic, yes. There are many very big companies in mortal business combat over SOA. Because SOA will someday be synonymous with enterprise IT. SOA means “bet the ranch” to every enterprise technology company today.

This is the SOA Blog. I will write about SOA and the companies trying to kill each other over SOA. It will be fun!

Do you have an inside story about companies involved in SOA? Can you tell us why Shai Agassi really left SAP, for example? Or who will get screwed by the Software AG/WebMethods merger? Who’s really calling the shots at BEA? You know, fun stuff.

Send us your tips and gossip to thesoablog@gmail.com.