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Survivor's Guide to 2007: Enterprise Applications: Page 5 of 6

That's the run-time story. What about design-time? Governance suites, also known as the registry/ repository, were almost all acquired by the big guns in the last half of 2006. Within a two-month period, WebMethods snatched up Infravio, Hewlett-Packard got Mercury (which had previously acquired Systinet), and BEA Systems picked up Flashline. LogicLibrary still stands alone, relying on extensive partnerships with ISVs such as BEA, Oracle, Reactivity, SOA Software, and Sun Microsystems to keep it in the running, at least for now.

The ability to enforce standards and compliance with defined enterprise architectures is paramount to controlling services. As the number of services grows, so do the relationships between them. A massive change in one can adversely affect the behavior and availability of countless other services or applications. Governance suites provide the control necessary to keep services aligned with organizational standards, as well as the ability to map out the dependencies and relationships among services--an absolute necessary in a rapidly evolving SOA.

You'll want to dig into governance options in 2007, but wait for the second quarter--the dust from the scrambling and acquisitions should have settled by then.

The New Open-Source Model

When open-source software first hit the scene, it was a radical idea that left many enterprises tempted, but uneasy about support. Once Red Hat proved the OSS model could work, a herd of vendors tried to play the same game. Many failed.

Then, IBM had an interesting idea, based on the common practice of giving away development versions of its products to win the hearts and minds of developers. Big Blue adopted a hybrid model that crossed the free "development" version of software with the open-source model. And thus was born the "community" edition of so many products. With this new model, ISVs and customers alike reap benefits. Even TIBCO Software recently entered the fray, open-sourcing its General Interface, an Ajax-like set of libraries the integration giant uses within its other products. Adobe, IBM and Laszlo all have similar offerings, with more sure to join the fray in 2007.