Mercury, a provider of business technology optimisation
software, is to acquire Systinet, which produces IT management
tools for service oriented architectures (SOAs).
The £60m acquisition is regarded as an important step in the
evolution of SOAs. 2006 is predicted by many analysts to be the
year that SOAs enter the mainstream, with suppliers providing
references of users who have successful deployed the
architectures.
Combining project lifecycle management with an SOA is seen as
the way forward. Neil Ward-Dutton, a partner at analyst firm
Maceiter Ward-Dutton, said, "What is clear from users who have
moved beyond early SOA projects is the need to think about the
lifecycle of an SOA."
He said users needed to have full control of the lifecycle of an
SOA in order to demonstrate business value.
According to analyst firm AMR Research, one of the biggest
concerns regarding SOAs and composite applications is ownership and
responsibility. When an application is composed of services that
span many functional areas, users need to ascertain who is
ultimately accountable for its success or failure.
AMR Research analyst Dennis Gaughan said, "The IT management and
SOA worlds are heading down parallel tracks with the concepts of
service registries and service catalogues.
"While one is for management and the other for execution, there
needs to be tight linkage between the two, which makes the
Mercury/Systinet combination an important one for companies that
want to govern in a consistent manner."
Systinet technology is used to manage SOA business services and
to build secure web services. Systinet technology, when combined
with Mercury BTO Enterprise offerings, will help users to take a
lifecycle approach to optimising the quality, performance and
availability of SOA business services, Mercury said.
Systinet SOA products provide a "system of record" and a set of
governance and lifecycle capabilities that help provide the
visibility, control, quality and integrity needed to build an
SOA.
They deliver capabilities for publishing and discovering
business services; creating, managing and enforcing policies; and
managing the full lifecycle of business services and other SOA
assets.