SOA filling the Gaps

I was asked in ebizq SOA forum: What Do You Think of Oracle Buying AmberPoint? My answer in the following lines is my First Take of that acquisition. AmberPoint is a very small vendor who has a remarkable Run Time SOA Governance product. Its offerings includes also SOA Management solutions and lately also Transactions Run Time Governance products. It was a matter of time until one of the mega companies will acquire it. The natural candidate for acquiring it was its closest partner Microsoft . I think that Oracle acquired it in order to fill a gap in its SOA portfolio ( BEA licensed AmberPoint's products prior to being acquired by Oracle), but the main reason for that acquisition is beyond SOA. Executing Oracle strategy requires Network and Systems Management (NSM) solutions even before the Sun acquisition. After the Sun acquisition an NSM solution is a must. Oracle's sales men are talking about management solutions at least four or five years, but unfortunatel...

ZapThink 's analyst David Linthicum wrote a zapflash titled: Avoid Vendor Driven Architecture (VDA).In this Zapflash David Linthicum describes two prevailing SOA implementation patterns: buying SOA products from existing vendors and letting these vendors to design and define the solution. According to his analysis the outcome of such approach will be a failed SOA implementation because SOA is Architecture and not Technology, so the expectation of out of the box magic technology solution to improper architecture is both unrealistic and misleading. As an experienced consultant I would add to this that whatever the technology or architecture is vendors are biased towards their own solutions and vendors employees rewards are dependent upon sales. This post is not about VDA but about VDS or V endor D riven S urveys. Same as Architectures build by vendors are suspect to bias towards their solutions; results of Surveys executed by vendors probably will be biased towards their so...