Oracle today has announced its acquisition of AmberPoint, a maker of SOA management software.
AmberPoint’s SOA Management System solution is focused on resolving issues in application performance and transaction monitoring. The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and the transaction is expected to close during the first half of this year, according to Oracle.
AmberPoint has partnerships with HP, Microsoft, Parasoft, SAP and TIBCO. Oracle will continue to support multiple platforms “even if the relationship ends,” and it will support OEM agreements going forward, the company said in a conference call with the press.
“My guess is that Oracle will terminate many of these relationships,” said Anne Thomas Manes, vice president and research director for Burton Group. AmberPoint, which is the “clear leader” in the SOA management market, is an “excellent acquisition” for Oracle, she added.
“I view SOA management as the most useful piece of SOA infrastructure an organization can buy, yet very few organizations have bought one,” Manes said.
“The big vendors have universally promoted ESB as the foundation of a SOA infrastructure, and they’ve traditionally played down SOA management. I have the opposite perspective; SOA management should be the foundation of the infrastructure, and ESBs are less important.”
Oracle intends to integrate data from AmberPoint’s governance runtime into its Fusion middleware products, including Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle SOA Governance and Oracle SOA Suite, the company said.
“We expect the addition of AmberPoint’s products to Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA Suite will provide stronger end-to-end governance that allows customers to manage the entire life cycle of SOA-based solutions, providing visibility and management across heterogeneous environments,” said Thomas Kurian, Oracle executive vice president of product development.
“I doubt that Oracle will start to downplay ESBs, but I expect they will start to aggressively promote SOA management,” Manes said.
