LiteBytes from Lustratus Research

Software AG and a dramatic example of SOA success in government

When I hear from a vendor about massive reductions in processing time or cost savings associated with the use of its products, I must confess to getting deeply suspicious.  This is because when I dig a little deeper, the trumpeted project often turns out to be little more than a proof-of-concept or otherwise small scale solution.  Therefore, I was surprised to hear just such a claim when I recently spoke with Dr Peter Kurpick, Chief Product Officer of Software AG, about their SOA straegy and the business strategy and that the system in question was in fact a very significant one (the announcement of which I somehow missed earlier this year). 

The project for UKvisas (the national agency responsible for issuing visitor visas) integrates multiple information sources to quickly filter out individuals who should be denied entry to the UK for various reasons.  (Using SOA to integrate multiple data sources owned by multiple agencies is a SOA-pattern which I have come across in a number of projects.) 

In this case, the implementation (built on Software AG’s products) has reduced processing times from over 2 days to less than 30 minutes.  It is an excellent example of how government is successfully using SOA to target specific and high value problems: As well as hugely reducing the processing time, there is also a very tangible benefit as each deportation (in effect a failure to screen out the visitor at time of entry) costs £11,000 .

What is encouraging is that governments seem to be learning from its mistakes of a few years back when it spent 100s of millions on integration projects that fell apart.  This project appears to suggest that the UK government has both understood how to use SOA to extract very measurable benefits and how to focus on specific business objectives instead of getting lost in never ending programmes which can never deliver.  To do this requires sophistication about how SOA should be adopted by your organisation and the central role of SOA governance (both key themes of Software AG’s SOA strategy).

It is also a good example of how SOA (as well as BPM) can provide as much benefit from reduction in the risk of error as it does from efficiency improvement.  This is important for anybody wishing to justify an investment in SOA:  Unlike SOA benefits such as agility or even reuse which are hard to measure and can have a long lead time to pay-back, the value of reducing errors can be calculated easily as error rates are often already tracked in organisations and the cost of recovery from an error is often very significant.   

Ronan

Now its IONA's turn to be acquired - by Software AG?

IONA has just announced  that it has received an unsolicited offer to be acquired by an unnamed company.  Over the last week there has been speculation that Software AG is the mysterious buyer.  Software AG buying would make some sense in that it is inline with its vision of building a major integration company through acquisition.  IONA does have an excellent customer base and an interesting SOA OSS play.  On the downside, IONA main business comes from the declining CORBA market and there would also be major overlaps on its closed source SOA side with the already crowded Software AG catalog post its WebMethods acquisition. 

However, alternative buyers are less obvious as it is a company in the middle of a difficult transition - attempting to replace its rapidly decreasing CORBA revenue stream with lower than expected growth in its open and closed source SOA product lines.  Which means that I am putting my money on Software AG being the acquirer.

Ronan

p.s. It is beginning to feel like this is becoming a finance blog - rest assured with only Tibco left out there, the current merger wave is bound to come to an end!

Software AG and webMethods - part II

Previously I have blogged on the SoftwareAG acquisition of webMethods, and what it might mean. Lustratus also produced a paper on the subject, here. I thought it was time for an update. now things are becoming clearer.

I congratulate SoftwareAG on listening to my comments! Well, at least partially....the company has brought together pieces from both the webMethods and SoftwareAG sides in the area of SOA, and has come up with its suite, offering an ESB (well, actually more than one), adapters, BPM, BAM and legacy and user interface integration support into an SOA suite, called - wait for it - webMethods SOA Suite!

The company has wisely decided to leverage the strength of the webMethods brand name, both in the integration/SOA space and also geographically in the US. My only criticism is that in fact I have been slightly misleading. In fact, I believe the full name is 'Software AG webMethods SOA Suite'. I just hope leaving the Software AG name so prominently does not backfire.

It seems that the suite will be made up of webMethods BAM and BPM, together with a combination of SoftwareAG and webMethods integration infrastructure products. For example, Software AG's CentraSite deals with registry/repository needs, and use is also made of Software AG's connectivity power. So, for example, webMethods EntireX deals with turning legacy code into SOA services. The ESBs are a bit confusing - there appear to be 3. One is a regular ESB, one is an ESB+ (basically the webMethods integration backbone) and one is a lightweight integration tool aimed at partner network needs.

So how is the merger going down? Well, it seems that at least some webmethods customers are glad to see the combination. Apparently this is because webMethods was actually a mature start-up - that is, innovative but not necessarily strong in internal development/delivery/maintenance processes, whereas Software AG has a reputation for being a solid, experienced and mature software brand. So presumably webMethods customers hope Software AG will bring some additional discipline to product delivery and support. 

Anyway, the proof of the pudding will be seeing whether the combination gains traction. I think it has a chance, although if only they had dropped the SoftwareAG brand from the suite altogether....

Steve