SOA Software, a rising standalone vendor in the SOA and Web services space, has bought Web services networking specialist Blue Titan for an undisclosed sum.
Blue Titan makes Network Director, a package of message management and policy-based mediation software that helps developers build Web services Network Director provides implementations of standards to help customers using disparate enterprise service buses (ESB) Message management and policy setting are crucial components for distributed computing models like service-oriented architectures (SOA) Blue Titan’s software fills a gap in SOA Software’s portfolio, which includes Service Manager for management; Registry for governance; and XML VPN to help companies publish secure B2B Web services for their partners. Blue Titan Founder, CEO and CTO Frank Martinez will become executive vice president of the combined company, focusing on product strategy and working under SOA Software CEO Paul Gigg. SOA Software will continue to support Network Director, and will offer Blue Titan’s customers, which include Pfizer, British American Tobacco and Yahoo, preferential access to SOA Software’s technology. Ian Goldsmith, vice president of product marketing for SOA Software, said the purchase of Blue Titan was not a bail out by any means, but a way for the company to build on its messaging and policy prescription tools. “In order to take it to the next level, it made sense for Frank to merge Blue Titan into SOA Software and allow a larger organization to drive the technology,” Goldsmith said. Goldsmith also said the buy will help the SOA Software toward its stated goal of topping $100 million in revenues. SOA Software reported revenues of $29.9 million for 2005. ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said the deal will help SOA Software offer software that does not discriminate against platforms from disparate vendors. “The platform neutrality is an important factor here, because companies are finding that when they take the platform/ESB approach to SOA infrastructure, they still need a way to handle mediation among various platforms and integration technologies — middleware for their middleware, if you will,” Bloomberg said. “The only way out of this catch-22 is to implement a scalable, enterprise class mediation/management/security solution along with whatever ESBs or other integration infrastructure is already in place. That’s just what SOA Software has put together.” SOA Software has been the only standalone SOA and Web services software provider in the industry to acquire companies at a regular clip. The Santa Monica, Calif., company acquired Flamenco Networks, ThoughtDigital and Merrill Lynch’s SOLA transaction platform in the last 18 months. SOA Software hopes to grab more market share from giants IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems, Oracle and SAP in what IDC claims will be a $7 billion market for SOA infrastructure by 2009.
