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.