I have recently been to the webMethods integration world 2006 and I saw the demo of the Infravio product there. You heard the news about Infravio being acquired by webMethods. I think that is one of the best things that they have done in the recent past. Infravio is one of the best vendors that I have seen for SOA governance. They are a pure-play SOA governance vendors. They flagship product “X-Registry” is a great tool for Design-Time and Run-Time management of your SOA environment. Now, webMethods has a complete offering of SOA development and governance tools.
IBM’s WebSphere Services Registry and Repository (WSRR) is the WebSphere’s version of the product to govern your SOA environment. I have not seen this in action myself, but heard some good stuff about this. I dont know why IBM always makes our life complicated, but we have to use a varied set of tools for the entire SOA governance. The best part with IBM of course is the broader coverage in terms of SOA governance, that no other software vendor could match. Not only that, these tools integrate very well with their SOA offerings: WebSphere ESB and WebSphere Process Server products.
Pure-play vendors like Infravio, Systinet, Amber Point are doing so well because of the very reason that they focus mainly on the governance aspect of it and they do it very well. I am sure TIBCO also offers a SOA goveranance tool, but it is not on top of my mind as of now. I have figure what it is though.
Well, these are the products that are on top of mind for me in terms of SOA governance. I foresee a lot more consolidation of these vendors.
Cheers,
Steve Lokam