The growing importance of open-source Web services
September 8, 2005 Gartner Research says that the launch of the Synapse project underscores the rising importance of open-source Web services and open-source middleware. However, Synapse's ultimate success is conditional on real-life technology and it's wide adoption by big-business, software integrators and IT vendors. The Apache Software Foundation recently received a proposal for an open-source SOA intermediary, called Synapse. The effort, spearheaded by WSO2, along with Infravio, Sonic Software, Blue Titan Software, and Iona Technologies — is designed to enable the development of a Web services mediation framework, incorporating much of the functionality of an enterprise service bus. ESB functions covered by Synapse include SOAP-based connectivity, message transformation and routing, and SOAP transport protocol bridging.  According to Gartner's analysts, Synapse "offers further evidence that open-source technology will have a massive impact on application integration." The analysts predict that "real-world" Synapse-enabled products will be available by early 2006, and "will initially be targeted at providing an embeddable ESB core that the partners can extend with proprietary capabilities or integrate into their 'closed-source' products." However, Gartner predicts that Synapse will face challenges in getting vendors with different agendas to cooperate on the same platform. "The key success factors for Synapse will be its ability to show quality of technical implementation, support from independent software vendors and systems integrators, adoption by open-source distributors, and in real-world production deployments by the year end 2006.  The analyst firm says that the Synapse launch is likely to increase the impact of open-source business models on the middleware market, and that vendors need to support open-source efforts as part of their market strategies. Gartner analysts also advise enterprise IT executives and developers not to be "confused by the stream of announcements of open-source ESBs. Monitor Synapse and other open-source ESB projects — and particularly their adoption by independent software vendors and systems integrators — but do not make a commitment until the technology is available and proven in real-world projects." Initially, Gartner says, Synapse's impact will be limited to increased interoperability between the products of the vendors involved, as well as vendors using the open-source technology as a base for product development. Source: Web Services.org USA & Canada, call toll free today at 1-800-547-4149 or just send us an email for additional information on any Web Services offered on this website.  
|
