Locking Up SOA Governance

Hewlett-Packard's acquisition of Systinet and WebMethod's purchase of Infravio--both of which make service-oriented architecture governance products--could be bad news for the enterprise. Governance products ensure adherence to an architectural standard for SOA initiatives, but without strong, standalone offerings, enterprises will get whatever their middleware vendor ships as part of its product. Before these acquisitions, the loose coupling between SOA infrastructure solutions offered a best-of-breed approach to implementing a SOA strategy.

Sun's Service Registry and its open-source partner, freebXML, remain standalone options, but neither is likely to serve all markets equally well. If the products from Infravio and Systinet don't remain standalone offerings, there will be a huge hole in the market. A new player could slip in and emerge as a key vendor. --Lori MacVittie, [email protected]