July 28th, 2006
HP's Mercury acquisition fortells changes for SOA infrastructure
As Dan Farber mentioned earlier this week, HP acquired Mercury. Not long ago, of course, Mercury acquired Systinet, who’s product line includes a very capable SOA registry (I reviewed Systinet’s registry last year for InfoWorld.)
This makes the HP acquisition very interesting from a SOA perspective. HP’s network and systems management products, combined with Mercury’s IT management products and Systinet’s registry give HP a suite of products that cover the board.
Still, integrating these myriad products won’t be easy. Anyone familiar with Oracle’s multiple acquisition (including CRM giant Siebel) and the resulting "fusion" project to make all of it work together can guess at the work ahead for HP. Moreover, the integration could cause considerable confusion and pain to customers trying to map out their SOA infrastructure if HP isn’t extremely open about their product roadmap and integration plans.
I’ve always been sceptical of all-in-one stacks, preferring to mix and match to get an infrastructure that meets my needs and doesn’t include a hundreds bells I don’t need. Infravio’s registry product (which I also reviewed earlier this year) remains as an independent SOA repository and I suspect the the Systinet registry will remain a standalone product as well for IT shops who don’t buy the whole stack.
Phil Windley is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
