Paul discussesOracle’s comprehensive strategy and roadmap for it’s [tag]Fusion Middleware[/tag] [tag]SOA[/tag] stack. After BEA’s merger with [tag]Oracle[/tag] for $8.5 Billion,  it was predicted but one of the most awaited disclosures in the [tag]SOA[/tag] world. Here is my take on Charles Phillips’ disclosure in his 105 minute webcast:

1. There will be no forced migration for existing BEA customers.

I assume, Oracle will make it more tempting for you to move into Oracle suite rather than forcing you out of BEA. As a customer, I would never like to stay with the same version for entire lifetime. There are lots of good things happening in this world and to remain competitive, I feel its very important to be continuously upgrade to newer technologies. Oracle has beautiful plans to bring in Fusion applications. This should make things a lot easier for existing BEA customers to scale up to a pure SOA environments. (more…)

This is a pleasant news. In my post on June, 16, 2008, I predicted that a consolidation in SOA Quality and Operations space is inevitable as the biggies would run to fill in these holes in their stack.

What this means for [tag]Progress[/tag]?

[tag]M&A[/tag]s is not new to [tag]Progress[/tag]. They had acquired Actional sometime back to incorporate SOA management and policy enforcement capabilities to the Progress SOA suite. Progress will benefit tremendously by augmenting multi web Standards based integration capabilities of IONA to Sonic ESB and Sonic MQ. Mindreef will augment the hole in the SOA quality and validation area. Progress is all set to have an end to end [tag]SOA[/tag] offering giving a heads on to honchos like IBM and Oracle when it comes to SOA product stack.

What this means for [tag]Mindreef[/tag] and [tag]IONA[/tag]?

SOA is increasingly becoming a tough market for niche players like Mindreef and IONA. Customers are looking at lowering the TCO by going with a single SOA vendor strategy. I foresee a increase in value proposition by integrating these tools with a wider SOA stack and then enabling a sell through.

What this means for customers?

Well, if you were one of the SOA starters, who was wondering which vendor to look for implementing enterprise SOA, you got to add one more tool into your checklist. Progress will now have a compelling value proposition and could easily be the tool of your choice.

Today, Progress already has a rich toolset on SOA stack. These acquisitions will further endorse Progress as a force to reckon with in SOA market.

What is Social Omnipresence?

Social Omnipresence is term coined for a platform or service neutral roaming network in Social networking world.

Just imagine you take your [tag]social network[/tag] anywhere you go, beyond the boundaries of your PC, Laptop, Mobile and even your network host. So now, you are at the center of your network, that comprises of friends in Orkut or Facebook, Professional connections in Linked In, your Twitter followers and your blog readers etc.. You choose the platform that you want to use according to your convinience and your network make the decisions based on their preferences. Irrespective of platform that you choose to host your identity on, your network follows you…

Are we Ready Yet?

The building blocks are all there already. You have social networking sites. You have [tag]Mobile Social networks[/tag] that are catching up in a big way. You have emerging standards like [tag]Open Social[/tag] and [tag]Google Friend Connect[/tag] that will glue your identity together. Social Network Portability takes care of making your profile information available on all affiliated sites. OAuth and OpenID become your Social Security Identification (like SSN in real world). Just imagine, this opens a whole new business model for [tag]network aggregators[/tag]. We will see equivalents of [tag]Technorati[/tag] and [tag]Digg[/tag] to swarm the world of social networking. A recent report from Computer world confirms that the social networking community will hit 975 million mark by 2012. This opens up a huge market for “Social Networker” centric busines models.

It’s Feasibility

How feasible is this concept in today’s scenario? Especially with the recent stand off between Google and [tag]Facebook[/tag]. I dont this as a great threat. Infact, any new promising technology or concept always has multiple fathers claiming its origin. Many standards mushroom around it and its finally the user community and market forces, which decide the winner. Even if there are multiple standards that emerge around this concept, It would be rather easy to integrate using 3-4 parallel standards than 100s non standard compliant network. If you have worries about internet penetration, mobile usage and other demographics, be rest assured all trends are on their way up.

Conclusion

As I write this post, there are so many permutations and combinations that I can think of. Blog best practices that I made for my blog restrict me to make it any longer. I will leave that for later day and will leave you with this thought. And if you still think this concept is far away. Look at this post from [tag]Mashable[/tag].

I fully agree with George Colony on his thought provoking post. Just add me to the list of people who have been clicking and typing on the Microsoft platform for 15 years now.

[tag]Bill Gates[/tag] was probably the best thing that  happened to [tag]Microsoft[/tag]. But as all good things come to end, its time, Microsoft moves ahead.

Heres my analysis of what’s wrong with Microsoft:

1. Microsoft has become too predictable. The best thing about Bill Gates was that he was repetitive and yet innovative. I quote an example of Windows 95. It wasn’t something radically different. But the way it drove platform convergence on a users desktop…made it phenominal. And that was the reason for its success.
2. Always chasing Google. My appologies for being so blunt. Competing is not the same as following. When google came up with GMail. It was just an Email service yet it as so different. As a avid user, when I expect something from Microsoft, I expect an enjoying user experience. That how it has been at Microsoft.
3. Not leveraging it’s community.  Microsoft has by far the largest community of users. I believe most of the Google and Yahoo lovers themselves use Microsoft platform. Leverage that community. Integrate Desktop with online experience. Revive the magic of simplicity and ease that Windows 95 promised.
4. Missing the fizz of Innovation. Microsoft products and services are increasingly becoming stereotyped. Microsoft needs a killer App.

After, the yahoo debacle, I am sure Steve Balmer is taking his time out and spending his thoughts on what could best direction for Microsoft.

SOA product stacks have seen a lot of turbulence in past few years. The recent one that created ripples in the industry was Oracle’s BEA acquisition. That leaves us with a good question. It is over yet? Or we will witness some more action…

If one looks at the SOA stacks from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others, they pretty much have an offering to cover various aspects like Service enablement, ESB, BPM, BAM and Governance etc. Where I still see a void is with the tactical aspects of the game. The companies that are adopting SOA, are increasingly understanding the importance of Quality management of SOA assets and looking at ways to align the operations team to manage SOA infrastructure. The traditional testing methodologies and ITSM processes need an upgrade to support the company’s SOA vision. It is this void that will drive next level of consolidation. Vendors would want to enhance their existing offerings in this space by either enhancing their products or buying once that are already into this space. Not so recent acquisition of Mercury by HP has seen some action. HP has already come up with dedicated offering around SOA testing and Operations by bringing out that SOA flavor in their Quality Center and Business Availability Center. There are several niche players like Amberpoint, webLayers, ITKO Lisa and Parasoft that target Quality management aspects. These niche players could be easy targets of biggies like Oracles and IBMs of the world who want to boast of themselves as a single stop shop of all the SOA needs…

Blogosphere is swarmed with posts on the recent Yahoo-Microsoft fiasco and Google coming as a saviour of Yahoo. In one such post on Tech Crunch Mike refers this as a mass destruction of investor’s trust and on the contrary Fred Wilson defends the move and terms this as Yahoo’s opportunity to get lean and focus more on what it is good at. I kind of extrapolate these thoughts and look at another aspect of the show. Is this the end of this fiasco..May be not. I see this as the beginning of another crusade, this time it’s on Internet Market share. One one side it’s the undisputed leader of Desktop PCs- Microsoft and on the other side its the king of cyberspace - Google. And when there are two kings they always wrestle to be on top of each other. Its not a matter of being the number one. Its about being the king of the world…

Let’s get a little deeper into the whole thing and see how important it is for each of them to fight for the throne. Application space is swarmed by many big and small players. Google’s best bet is the internet. They want to leverage the reach of internet to build a platform where if you need something on the web…choice is simple, it’s Google. There is hardly anything that Google has left. Right from Messenger to email, entertainment to social networking, desktop search to mobile platform. There is a Google offering everywhere. The idea is simple, after having a good share of the bytes you send on the internet, it wants to have a share of your Hard disk space too. It has launched offline Google Apps, Reader and now they are planning even an Operating system for mobiles.

Microsoft come from the other side of the world. Its leadership in desktop is already indisputable. Its fighting every inch of your corporate bytes by rubbing shoulders with Oracles and IBMs of the world. So why leave Internet for someone else. They have equally competing products…They call it Windows Live. So it has a maps, it has a Mail, messenger a social community as well. Its already into your mobiles. The intent of Microsoft is simple. Every click you make. Either on the desktop or on your mobile or in the Browser. Every piece of space that you interact should run on Microsoft software.

I see this moving beyond Yahoo acquisition. I see a tussle that has just come out in open and will be here to stay for sometime. What this really means a fresh era of consolidation. Not only in the leading internet platforms like Google and Microsoft but also in other prominent web companies; as they struggle to regain the market share.

Your thoughts welcome….