Comparison of SOA Suites

Several SOA vendors are trying to put together comprehensive suites of SOA products that in theory should be capable of addressing all aspects of SOA, including governance, integration, business process management and others.

Formation of SOA suites is having a tremendous impacts on how SOA products are selected as many organizations are being tempted to settle for "one stop shop" approach as opposed to doing proper product evaluation within each SOA product category. (Interesting discussion about SOA suites is available at ZDNet).

So what is a SOA suite and how offerings from different vendors support different aspects of SOA? The table below attempts to answer this question.

One thing to keep in mind is that SOA products within the same category can differ substantially in terms of their feature sets. Definitions of ESB, registry and other SOA product categories are not standardized and so vendors are free to categorize their products as they wish. Detailed analysis and evaluation is still a requirement when selecting SOA products.

IBM, BEA and Oracle are emerging as leaders in terms of completeness of their SOA suites. Microsoft's products are not as comprehensive, nevertheless Microsoft's marketshare makes it a signifcant player - Micorsoft's shops tend to be very loyal to the vendor even if Microsoft's SOA story is not as compelling.

Other vendors, including Software AG/webMethods and HP have interesting offerings too, however, they still have some gaps in their capabilities and so they are not covered here (perhaps I'll add more vendors in the future).