There are two major trends shaping the high technology landscape in 2007. One is clearly Service-oriented Architecture, an emerging computing model that allows customers to make better use of their existing IT assets and investments to address changing business requirements, more rapidly introduce new products or services or simply lower the fixed cost of their IT operations. And while it can be difficult to separate the vendors’ hype from reality, it’s not just the vendors that are betting on SOA.
In fact, a recent Goldman Sachs research note indicated that the firm believed that SOA was going to go further mainstream in 2007, and be one of the major technology shifts that would destabilize the status quo landscape. The firm believes that, as with other shifts in computing models that have come before, this change is going to create opportunities for new companies, and force many existing companies to change their product roadmaps to cash in on the opportunity.
Interestingly, what many traditional vendors have done is merely changed their positioning – not their underlying technology – and are trying to attack new challenges with outmoded approaches that are counterintuitive to the very nature of SOA.
The other force driving significant change in the technology landscape is the continuing mainstream adoption of open source software. This is corroborated by industry analyst findings that indicate that by 2010, more than 80% of enterprise investment in infrastructure will be investments in open source derived technology. We’re all aware of the success of Linux and of open source technologies such as application servers and databases. But, this success came long after the maturity of their traditionally company developed counterparts. What we’re seeing with the convergence of open source and SOA is that the infrastructure required for companies to adopt this computing model is being developed in parallel in open source communities and vendor R&D facilities.
There is a convergence taking place that will change the fundamental nature of IT and IONA is at the center of it. Where many vendors are trying to offer warmed-over EAI or J2EE stacks as the answer to SOA, IONA has taken a differentiated approach that embraces the truly distributed nature of SOA. We’re also actively involved in the communities that are developing today’s open source alternatives for SOA infrastructure, giving customers real choice as to how best meet their SOA technology needs.
Through our approach to how customers can deploy SOA, we’re changing the game from that of “one size fits all” technology decisions to one where customers can deploy the technology they need, when they need it and easily adapt their technology choices as business requirements change. We’re offering customers a convenient way to bring open source into their SOA deployments, adding a new dimension of cost savings, flexibility and transparency.