Free ZIP software from PKWare

Not sure how many of you recall, PKWare, the company that created PKZip program. They are offering free SecureZip utility for Individual use. Go to http://www.securezip.com/ for more info.
You could also try this link.

webMethods after Software AG

I have been having offline and online discussions with people about Software AG's acquisition of webMethods. Some of the concerns that we have discussed are:

• Combined Company has multiple overlapping products: Products from Software AG, webMethods and Infravio overlap in SOA Registry area. They would have to identify how they want to position these products.
• webMethods' History of Combining different finished products is not so great. They spent a hugh amount of time developing products such as Modeler, Workflow etc and took a long time to merge them.
• webMethods' History of Product Upgrade is not great either: Customers who upgraded from ActiveWorks/webMethods Version 4 Solution to their Version 5 and then Version 6 would tell you nightmares they have had trying to do the upgrade. Now the customers face a similar issue upgrading from Workflow to the new modeling tool.
• A foreign company: webMethods has had large Federal Accounts: DoD, Military using webMethods for EDI etc. Would they want to buy same software from a non-american company? It is not a fair world out there.
• Open Source: webMethods has been using Open Source Tools into its products for a long time now. It built first version of webMethods Manager and Optimize on Tomcat, Hybernate etc. It used embedded Tomcat Server for variety of purpose. But it has not been so great in contributing to Open Source. Now it faces increasing compitition from open source world itself. Without having partners in that arena, it faces a great challange in small and medium enterprises.
• Losing F2000 Customers: webMethods positioned itself as a solution provider in Fortune 2000 arena. That is a highly crowded space. Integration Tools from SAP and Oracle when bundled with respective ERP solutions promise a better value proposition to the Fortune 2000 companies. Fortune 2000 companies also find that their IT Teams tooled in Java and Java Servers are able to adapt to SAP and Oracle's J2EE solution easily compared to a non-J2EE webMethods (this is also being seen as a way to lower TCO by not requiring specialized webMethods skillset).

There are more things to discuss... will wait to hear comments.

IONA acquires LogicBlaze

IONA acquired LogicBlaze, a company with an open source Integration Platform apart from active supporter of Apache ServiceMix and ActiveMQ. They do not appear planning to provide support for LogicBlaze's products, which may cause worry for its 20 customers. But it means other Vendors may have a chance at these customers, unless IONA offers them an option.

Integration Space, Who remains?

After webMethods's aquisition, 0nly pure play ESB/Integration ISV that remains in the market are TIBCO (going strong and moving into other areas such as AJAX), IONA (which has developed a decent open source strategy as well as has a legacy of CORBA Servers to sustain on 2005 –ve, 2006 +ve) and Vitria (already burning money ;-ve net income in last two years). See the graph comparing their fortunes from Google Finance.

There are other integration tools such as Sterling Commerce (very strong in EDI and SupplyChain Space) from AT&T stable, and Seebeyond (now part of Sun), We have to wait and see how they grow.

Software AG to Aquire webMethods

Also see http://www.softwareag.com/Corporate/Company/latestnews/20070405_WebMethods_page.asp.

Why?
First Thoughts:

• I think all the 3rd Party ISV Integration Tools are losing market share (new license revenue as well as from existing customer accounts).
• Fortune 2000 companies are moving away from Home Grown Legacy applications to off-the-shelf Enterprise Applications.
• Off-the-shelf Enterprise Applications are promising better integration capabilities, as a result, clientsforesee a reduced need to perform internal integrations using Integration Tools.
• Proliferation of SAP XI and Oracle Fusion bundled with ERP Rollout has reduced size of market for ISV integration tools.
• webMethods' lack of footprint in J2EE space makes it less attractive (say compared against a JBoss, webSphere or webLogic based Integration Tool)
• Its investment in SOA Space (in terms of money spent in acquisitions of about 6 companies in last 4 years) did not pay off very well (compared to pure play SOA companies such as Cape Clear).