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Survivor's Guide to 2007: Enterprise Applications: Page 6 of 6

Sure, it's an old twist on the "try before you buy" game, but this new approach is more successful than the cripple-ware gambit ever was. After all, the old evaluation software lacked full functionality, so it was impossible to truly evaluate the applications. Open-source editions are full-featured, completely functional, and enterprises don't pay for any of it unless they need support.

Unfortunately, we don't think this will ever be a popular model for hardware vendors, so stop watching for your free Cisco 6500.

Monday Morning Quarterback

ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS

We predicted that the registry/repository arena would be very important and active. Over this year, almost all the vendors were acquired by big guns. Think we were right about the hotness of this market?

Just look at the growth of vendors like SOA Software and you can see how important services-oriented architecture has been this year. No doubt about it, SOA management is going to continue to grow and expand its reach into other areas within the enterprise.

We said in our last Survivor's Guide that CRM on-demand was hot and would continue to grow, and look who jumped into the market this past year just to prove us right: SAP.

We said SOA nirvana wouldn't be attained in 2006, and it wasn't. We're going to go out on a limb to say it won't happen in 2007, either.

Lori MacVittie is an NWC Senior Technology Editor as well as a former software developer and network administrator. Write to her at [email protected].