Software AG held its annual Integration World conference in
Orlando this week. The name is more appropriate now than ever, as
it's still busy integrating its own products with webMethods'.
Though the company's SOA
roadmap doesn't call for a full merger of the old webMethods and
Software AG lines until mid next year (and that looks likely to
slip), it clearly wants people to think that it's ready for more,
announcing
partnerships with security gateway maker Layer 7 and business
intelligence vendor Cognos . Both are important, but they're better news for the partners than for Software AG.
The partnerships are very similar: Software AG will resell the
Cognos and Layer 7 products as part of its own suites, integrating
them as necessary. For Layer 7, that means applying policies from
CentraSite, the governance registry that pre-acquisition Software AG
co-developed with Fujitsu. For Cognos, it means sharing data with the
webMethods SOA and BPM suite.
Both product lines have been updated recently: Software AG
officially
launched a new version of CentraSite last month, and the
webMethods suite the month before. But the need to partner with Layer
7 and Cognos demonstrates how the merger still left large gaps in
Software AG's portfolio, with the two pre-acquisition product lines
more competitive than complementary.
Cognos and Layer 7 have one another thing in common: They’re
both the last surviving vendors in their niches, with their direct
competitors (like Fuego and Business Objects for Cognos, Reactivity
and DataPower for Layer 7) having been acquired. That makes both
obvious partners for vendors like Software AG, but also risky ones,
as either could be snapped up at any time by someone else.
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