It has come to my attention that there are really two kinds of SOA technology vendors out there, old school and new school. And each offers very different approaches to solving the SOA problem. I'm not going to mention any particular vendors, but you guys can guess who they are.

Old school SOA vendors are those with "legacy" integration or application development solutions that "SOA-tized" their stuff, basically adding Web services interfaces, enhanced security, etc.. I've been here before, you're working with an existing product and existing customers, and suddenly a new wave comes along, you have to keep up, thus you add another layer onto your existing product to make it a bit more acceptable to the market, and also maintain backward compatibility with your existing customer base. It's not easy.

The upside to old school is that you're in a new market space with a minimal amount of redevelopment. The downside is that you have an archaic product at the core, and it may not handle the new ways in which we're aligning systems today, at the service level and not the information level alone. You'll find that most of the ESB guys fit into the old school category, with a few exceptions.

New school SOA vendors are those with new products. Typically they are startups with less than 100 or so customers. They don't need to SOA-tize their products because they are typically built from the ground up with SOA in mind, doing both service and information-based integration.

The upside to new school is that you're getting a product that's built specifically for the application to a SOA. Moreover, these new guys typically solve a particular portion of the problem, such providing just the registry, development environment, or federated identity. They don't offer "all-in-one SOA solutions," which is good. To date, I've not seen a product that can do it all. The downside is that you're dealing with a new company that is going to change a lot in the next few years.

So, which school should graduate from? At the end of the day it's really a matter of your problem domain, and the problems you're looking to solve, that's for certain. However, I can say that the new school products have more applicability for the SOA space since they are specifically designed for that purpose. The old school products just seem like quick reinventions, many limited by the existing core product. When building a SOA you don't want limitations.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on November 25, 2005 05:37 AM