More SOA buyouts to talk about. The latest is IBMs bid to acquire MRO "driven by SOA desire."

"A day after making its third SOA (service-oriented architecture) acquisition, IBM was at it again Thursday. IBM announced plans to buy industrial asset management software vendor MRO Software for about $740 million in large part to help it develop repeatable services based on SOAs."

Moreover, IBM confirmed Wednesday that it had bought Webify Solutions, a small privately held provider of SOA development and deployment software and services specifically targeting the health-care and insurance industries.

Here we go again...and again...and again. As I pointed out in this past blog, the small SOA technology companies (< 1000 employees) are purchased faster than 2 dollar gasoline these days, and this trend does not seem to be letting up.

I'm not sure if I'm disturbed, or exciting about this. I do think most of the innovation out there is occurring in the small venture-backed companies, and while guys like IBM will always be a powerhouse with SOA, it just seems unnatural to me that so many SOA companies, before SOA is pervasive, are becoming parts of larger behemoths.

However, this does mean that the VC out there will be liking this space more, and thus provide more investment. This means more SOA startups, perhaps too many for the larger guys to eat.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on August 4, 2006 06:16 AM