<<When talking to analysts who cover service-oriented architecture and
are studying Microsoft's approach to SOA, a one word description
emerges: "different."
Microsoft is operating in a different SOA world from other major
software vendors, such as IBM, BEA Systems Inc. and the newly
conglomerated webMethods/Software AG, analysts say.
"They've always been kind of a different company, and they're staying
true to that," said Bradley F. Shimmin, principal analyst of
application infrastructure for Current Analysis, who recently met with
Microsoft to discuss their approach to SOA.
"Microsoft tends to market things very differently," said Ron
Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC., who is researching
Microsoft's approach to SOA. "They never have things that are in the
same product categories as everybody else. They've been very resistant
to any sort of Gartner three-letter acronym. You should give them a
hand for doing that."
As an example, Shimmin said, "They are enabling SOA but they don't
have an SOA suite." But while avoiding some standard SOA product
categories, analysts find Microsoft moving forward in the SOA space,
although pretty much within their own .NET world with BizTalk server
sometimes serving as a hub of sorts.
The analysts point out that Microsoft doesn't have an ESB but offers
ESB guidelines and capabilities. Microsoft doesn't support the Service
Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO)
specifications, which offer similar functionality to .NET. Microsoft
is not offering Business Process Management (BPM), which is this
year's hot topic in SOA, although it is aggressively pursuing workflow
technology. , Shimmin said Microsoft has 10 partners that focus on
BPM. He is also bemused that Microsoft recently announced .NET support
for Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) 1.1 while most SOA
vendors are already supporting the newly adopted BPEL 2.0. He said he
was told BPEL 2.0 is on the roadmap for later in the year.
"It's another example of how they work within their own universe," he
said.
Schmelzer doesn't like portraying Microsoft as if it were in an
alternative matrix with .NET as compared with the players in the Java
world such as IBM. He said criticism that everything Microsoft does
related to SOA is .NET centric, misses the point, or just reflects a
Java-bias.
"If you went to IBM and said you want WebSphere but they have to
deploy it on the .NET platform," Schmelzer said. "The answer is no.
WebSphere is a Java thing. IBM is just as much Java centric in their
approach as Microsoft is .NET centric in their approach."
What Microsoft is doing within their .NET world makes sense for their
customers and developers, the two analysts agreed.
For example, even though BizTalk is not being marketed as an
enterprise service bus, the analysts found mature functionality for
supporting SOA in the venerable product.
"They're selling boatloads of BizTalk," noted Jason Bloomberg, senior
analyst with ZapThink, "and many of those customers are leveraging it
in SOA initiatives, for example." Anne Thomas Manes, research director
at the Burton Group Inc., cited BizTalk as the number one offering in
Microsoft's SOA efforts.
In what may be a matter of having an ESB by another name, Shimmin
said, "BizTalk is going to remain their integration server. That's
really what it's good at. But, as you know, an integration server that
handles brokering and messaging and transformation, which is what
BizTalk does, is a key facet of an ESB. It's kind of splitting hairs.
It's just another example of how Microsoft operates in its own continuum."
BizTalk pre-dates the SOA marketing hype, but has matured to fit into
the service-oriented approach, Schmelzer said. "BizTalk was originally
a business-to-business document exchange platform when it first came
out," he explained. "It's evolved quite a bit. You could think of it
as integration middleware or as a composite service delivery platform.
It basically serves the role that you would use a WebSphere Business
Integrator for, or maybe the functionality that webMethods and
Software AG are providing."
Schmelzer said Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is the other key
to providing functionality also known as ESB.
"Microsoft would certainly position BizTalk as providing some of the
capabilities that people may be looking for in ESBs," he said,
"although they'd also include the rest of the WCF framework. Microsoft
sees the ESB not as a product but as a pattern. You can achieve all
the things you want to achieve in an ESB from the Microsoft family of
solutions."
Beyond BizTalk and WCF, Schmelzer noted that Microsoft's Connected
Services Framework and the Well-Enabled Service are two other pieces
of its SOA puzzle. "The Connected Services Framework is really a
collection of service products and technologies, and the Well-Enabled
Service is basically their positioning on what a SOA platform should
provide for services. It covers security, reliability, management,
governance and other technologies. The Connected Services Framework,
the Well-Enabled Service, and the products provided with BizTalk and
Windows Communications Foundation as well as Windows Workflow
Foundation, and Windows Presentation Foundation, that's the basis of
their enterprise SOA assets."
Shimmin said workflow is one of the strengths of the Microsoft
approach to SOA.
"If there's one thing about them that I feel they get," he said, "it's
that processes are human based. They all start and end with people. I
think that's reflected in their overall approach to SOA."
Microsoft's desktop dominance in the small-to-medium business (SMB)
market makes it's approach to SOA appealing to companies outside the
Fortune 1000 that may not be able to afford a major vendor's suite,
and lack the IT skills to assemble free open source software into an
SOA, Shimmin said.
"Microsoft's not ever going to be like BEA, Tibco, or
webMethods/Software AG, trying to create an entire suite, everything
from the tooling up to BAM/BPM with governance on top of that, and be
everything for building a SOA-based infrastructure," he said. "What
they realize is they have a really strong presence on the desktop and
through the desktop presence they're intimately tied into a lot of
business processes that go on inside companies they do business with
the SMB market in particular. With that realization, they actually are
on to something with that in terms of 'people-ready,' process friendly
SOA."
Schmelzer also sees Microsoft's SOA play being mainly for the
companies that already rely on Microsoft for their business software.
He said, "Microsoft's counterweight to companies that would be looking
at an IBM or BEA solution is obviously centered around the BizTalk
product line and the Windows Communications Foundation (WCF) and all
the products and technologies enabled by that, plus all the assets
they bring to the development table around Visual Studio and all the
things that would facilitate the creation of enterprise services."
"Microsoft has an ecosystem and they have a value proposition that's
very solid for that ecosystem," Schmelzer said. "What Microsoft has
for what it's doing is very good. It is what it is.">>
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