Hyperic Expands Open-Source SOA And Java Management

Posted by Andy Dornan on December 18, 2007

Open-source management startup Hyperic has announced technology and
sales partnerships with href="http://www.hyperic.com/news/releases/12_12_2007springsource.html" target="_blank">two
other growing open-source vendors: Iona and SpringSource. Iona is a
specialist Enterprise Service Bus vendor which href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=204702725">two
weeks ago announced that it will re-architect its products around an
open-source foundation. SpringSource is the new name for Interface 21,
the company formed by the creators of popular open-source Spring Framework.

Spring is mostly used for Web-based applications, but it has recently
attracted a lot of interest from enterprise SOA users and vendors and
emerged as the leading Java framework. And though Hyperic is quick to
point out that it isn't limited to SOA or to open-source, the
announcements highlight the growing role of open-source in SOA. There
are already open-source ESBs from MuleSource and Red Hat's JBoss (both
existing Hyperic partners) as well as Iona, so does this signal new
open-source options for SOA management?

It could. However, Hyperic isn't doing quite the same thing as vendors
like AmberPoint and SOA Software. They have extended into functions like
XML processing, whereas Hyperic's HQ line is focused squarely on
management and monitoring. Its main competitors are the traditional
management frameworks like IBM Tivoli and CA Unicenter, and it isn't
specific to SOA or open-source, though the company does use openness as
a major selling point. The theory is that because it's open-source, it
can be customized to manage almost anything.

Iona and Hyperic are both using the same business model, which involves
a combination of open-source and proprietary code. That means people who
download the free versions don't get as much functionality as customers
who buy licenses, so there's a much bigger incentive to pay for the
product than there would be if they were just selling support. This is
becoming increasingly common among open-source startups (XenSource is
the best known example), thanks partly to the dominance of larger
companies like IBM and Red Hat in the support market.