WebMethods 8 – Consistent Improvement

By Stefan Ried

On June 24 Software AG announced its latest webMethods 8.0 for a general availability in December 2009. First selected customers had already the chance to buy this release by end of June. That’s a good timing to rescue the vendor’s Q4-revenues with a major release right when the economy in US will (hopefully) recover again.

While my colleague Ken Vollmer will write in more detail about what the new functionality means for customers, I’d like to share a quick assessment on the 30.000-foot-perspective.

After the Software AG and WebMethods engineering divisions merged and some key people left, Software AG had to focus on the most urgent innovations and some continuous customer driven improvements. The major innovation went into the further development of the repository/registry CentraSite, an integrated BI Reporting infrastructure, and more collaboration capabilities across the development and analysis process.

CentraSite is still available as an independent product but turned into a prerequisite for most other components. It’s a mandatory part of the webMethods suite. A right move, as the time for large best of bread SOA governance deals is already over and the productivity in a comprehensive suite goes along with the consolidation of the middleware market. Beyond this, most components of the webMethods stack where continuously improved and one product has been renamed into webMethods Mediator. To avoid confusion with an earlier product from Software called "Mediator", here's an quick overview of the evolution of product names:

original market introduction	before webMethods acquisition	webMethods 7.x	webMethods 8
EntireX Mediator	CrossVision ServiceOrchestrator	retired from sales	supported until 2012
Infravio x-Broker	webMethods X-Broker	webMethods X-Broker	webMethods Mediator
webMethods Broker	webMethods Broker	webMethods Broker	webMethods Broker

Many customers will definitely have some benefit from the upgrade and it is up to the Software AG sales force to find the right maintenance/migration pricing balance that is compelling to customers. The tough competition for new deals is coming around the corner in the shape of integration-as-a-service with vendors like Hubspan or Boomi.com. Software maintenance and upgrade efforts are not even know in this approach.

Despite the technology improvements, system integrators and implementation partners of middleware and platform vendors ask Forrester frequently if the new release reflects a major shift in the vendor’s strategy. In the case of Software AG latest integration stack, this is not the case. Software AG started already about three years ago to focus on a business messaging and value based positioning of their technology. Highlighting the business message around Business-IT collaboration and productivity is a consequent continuation of its successful marketing - a swing that Oracle with its Fusion Middleware 11g launch was widely missing again.

However, I believe Software AG is missing still a huge potential combing the legacy of the mainframe application platform and the integration and BPM centric new world of webMethods. Actually, we had a very controversial debate among the leading Forrester analysts, if it would make sense for them to become a full application development platform. Software AG and Progress Software have both a similar heritage. They have both mainframe based full application development stacks and some new, but independent integration technology. Demographics tell us that the average CIO who still perceives these companies as application stacks will retire soon. At the same time more and more applications will be delivered in the SaaS style and the corresponding platform market (PaaS) will grow up to $ 15 billion annual revenue by 2016.

Software AG has to evaluate one of the following opportunities to retain market share in the market evolution driven by cloud computing and an ongoing market consolidation of integration and application platforms to merged business process platforms:

• Give new business logic a home. No matter if this is Java, Natural or any other process driven 4GL. The Otherwise Software AG’s install base will retire its Natural/Adabas stack over time.
• Move in the cloud. The market shifts from single tenant large enterprise infrastructure to multi-tenant/single-instance platforms in the cloud. Process driven 4GL languages are coming up again.

No question that the creation of a full blown middleware and application stack was even a major effort for Oracle with 11g and could be hardly funded by Software AG in its current form. The company failed already on its first trail to create a new application platform with a widely unsuccessful product called Bolero 15 years ago. But, this time Software AG has the Bolero lessons learnt, now combined with an competitive marketing, M&A experience and an solid install base; a strong potential to leverage for the next webMethods release.

Let me know what's your new enterprise or cloud application platform looks like and leave a comment.