A new report published by Butler Group reveals the competitive nature of the market for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) deployment technologies. According to the report, ‘SOA Platforms’, SOA vendors need to acquire a ‘critical mass’ market share in order to sustain the ongoing development investment that will be needed, and to prosper in a market that is set to become commoditised. For enterprises the adoption of SOA provides significant potential to improve the value they derive from their IT investments, in terms of increased flexibility, improved use of assets, alignment with business objectives, and reduced integration costs.

“The high adoption rate of SOA has attracted a large and diverse set of software vendors to compete for market share in the provision of the supporting infrastructure. As the market starts to mature it is inevitable that vendor consolidation, which is already significant, will accelerate further,” says Rob Hailstone, Software Infrastructure Practice director at Butler Group.

Butler Group’s report provides a competitive analysis of thirteen leading vendors of SOA infrastructure products, together with descriptions of the business issues, technology issues, and market issues that are shaping the delivery of SOA. It also gives a feature-by-feature comparison of the vendors, organised into eight categories: quality of service; messaging; standards; transformations; adapters and connectors; orchestration; business rules; and integrated development environment.

When scored on their ability to support the strategic deployment of SOA, the report highlights Oracle, TIBCO, and IBM as vendors that should be shortlisted.