Application Platform Strategies Blog

Mule ESB equals Porsche 911

Blogger: Chris Haddad

Distilling a sixteen page report (3400+ words) down to a short headline and 655 words takes considerable skill. Master distiller Rich Seeley recently wrote a SearchSOA.com article that featured Burton Group’s Mule ESB product profile report, “Mule ESB: A Polished-Metal Ride”. While the Burton Group report is well balanced and mostly positive on Mule, Rich’s news article starts out with a tone that negatively taints the article’s perspective. For example, Rich compared Mule ESB to a Toyota Corolla, which is a vehicle known as an economy choice rather than a high performance race car. In my conversation describing a ‘polished metal ride’, I probably should have mentioned to Rich my first car comparison choice. I would favorably compare Mule ESB to a Porsche 911; a car with a die-hard cult following of racing enthusiasts and a relatively affordable and adaptable compared to the exotic and expensive Ferrari mentioned as the top end choice in Rich’s article.

Rich does an excellent job quoting report content, and distills a few highlights. The sidebar details a key observation, “To effectively adopt Mule, teams should contain Java-centric and middleware-savvy development experts”. In fairness to Mule ESB, MuleSource is making improvements to their development tooling in order to lower the bar to developing services and mediation nodes. We will watch and report on their progress.

Mule ESB is a capable Enterprise Service Bus product, and I think the article’s title, “Mule ESB needs more SOA capability”, is a negative stretch on the core thesis in the report. I would state “Mule ESB needs more ecosystem compatibility” in order to reach the next level of adopting within companies. But my title isn’t as provocative!

The bottom line assessment in the report mentions seven constraints which will influence Mule ESB’s fit into your SOA infrastructure landscape. I encourage you to read the full report.  If you aren't a Burton Group subscriber, drop me an email at chaddad@burtongroup.com. A synopsis of our current bottom-line assessment: If you want a lightweight, integration-centric ESB, you appreciate open source, and you have reasonably sophisticated developers, you’ll probably like Mule. If you’re looking for a solution with a lot more bells and whistles and integration with third-party SOA infrastructure components, you should look elsewhere. Keep a close watch on MuleSource products; they hired a top-gun team, are rapidly closing the feature/function gap, and are a good strategic bet based on current feature breadth, mindshare, and future innovations.

Is your SOA meeting expectations?

Blogger: Chris Haddad

Anne Thomas Manes and I are currently conducting formal research to get a detailed and updated perspective of  SOA adoption. We're wondering if organizations establish realistic goals, identify and measure metrics, what return organizations are seeing, and how long it takes to realize those benefits. We also hope to identify any roadmap steps and trends that particularly lead to success, stalls, or breakdowns.

While hundreds of prior conversations with IT professionals have influenced our current perspective, a new research approach (Contextual Design) promises to add greater insight and change our recommendations. We would like to request your participation.

We plan to interview representatives from several companies. All data will be kept anonymous, and we guarantee  privacy and confidentiality. Our goal is to compile the information we collect to identity trends and patterns - not to produce individual case studies. We will be happy to share an early view of the compiled results with participants. The research will serve as the basis for future reports, and we plan to present our findings at our annual Catalyst Conference in San Diego in June.

If you would like to share your war stories and to benchmark your experience with peers, please contact me at chaddad@burtongroup.com to schedule a time to chat with Anne or me. 

Call for Catalyst 2008 Session Presentations

Blogger: Chris Haddad

There is still an opportunity to submit an abstract and share your real-world story with Catalyst attendees. We would like to obtain additional end-user participation and perspective in the following  APS-centric themes:

The Next Generation Application Platform
SOA, SaaS, and social software will fundamentally alter the platforms we use to build and operate application systems. This topic will postulate on the next generation application platform.

Software as a Service (SaaS)
New financial and architectural realities have promoted SaaS to a first-class application delivery model. This topic will discuss the risks and rewards of SaaS.

SOA Report Card
Everyone seems to be doing SOA, but is anyone making a passing grade? Based on real-world experiences, this topic will explore ways to improve your chances to succeed with SOA.

The Infrastructure Services Model: Focus on Identity Services
Enterprise applications based on SOA need to leverage identity infrastructure as reusable services, but current standards don’t ensure interoperability. Burton Group analysts define identity services, assess standards efforts, and challenge the industry to make it work.

New Realities for Data Management
Market trends including DBMS-based XML data management and standards such as XQuery are reshaping the data management landscape. This topic explains how to exploit new opportunities and manage related challenges.

While the formal 'call for papers' ends today, there is still an opportunity to participate.  If you desire to submit a proposal, please contact me at chaddad@burtongroup.com

Open Source Consolidation

Blogger: Joe Niski

A big week or two (i was on vacation for a bit) in the open source business. (Isn't it great that we're talking about "open source business" without missing a beat?) Sun buys MySQL (with sighs of relief from high-end MySQL users and would-be contributors), and SpringSource nabs Covalent.

Sun, which seems well on its way to open sourcing all its software assets, now has a hugely popular database to round out its software stack. i'd expect to see it as part of the standard Glassfish application server distribution, right alongside Apache Derby (aka JavaDB) before long. Glassfish, with both JRuby and MySQL, downloaded and installed with NetBeans 6.1 - what more could an enterprise web developer ask for? Netbeans/Glassfish may soon be the Rails developer's stack of choice, at least within the enterprise.

Meanwhile, back in Java-land, SpringSource seems happy to now be in Convalent's business of supporting popular Apache apps and components. It also gains a first-class support team for the ever-expanding Spring Framework. Spring has done an admirable job of living up to Rod Johnson's vision of radically simplifying enterprise Java development. The framework keeps gaining functionality (web services, comprehensive app security, OSGI support), and now provides nearly complete presentation-to-enterprise-resources functionality. It's also extending its core inversion-of-control container features into the .NET universe.

Two "superplatforms" in the making? Well, not really - neither Sun's stack nor the Spring Framework provide the depth and breadth of IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, or SAP. But as highly usable, flexible, and productive development and runtime platforms, they're hard to beat. And they complement each other quite well. If the superplatform vendors care about developer mindshare, or want a piece of the market for dynamic languages behind the corporate firewall, they should pay attention.

Summary of APS VantagePoint Telebriefing

Blogger: Anne Thomas Manes

If you missed the Application Platform Strategies VantagePoint telebriefing this week, you can find a nice summary of the SOA-related aspects of it in this article by Rich Seeley.

Market Convergence Continues

Blogger: Anne Thomas Manes

This morning Microsoft tendered an offer for Yahoo!
The bid is $44.6 Billion.

Here are some links:

Microsoft targets Yahoo! with $44.6bn bid

Microsoft's statement to the Yahoo! board

Microsoft pursues Yahoo! takeover

Also see Mike Gotta's thinking on the subject:

What A Yahoo! Acquisition Might Mean To Microsoft