Weekly Digests

Overview

• Consolidation continues: Epicentric is acquired by Vignette, Versant picks up Mokume, and Sonic makes its plans for eXcelon clearer.

• Gartner identifies a new integration category - the Enterprise Service Bus - with SpiritWave Integration Server and SonicXQ as archetype products

• The financial outlook continues to be mixed; Gartner predicts a bloodbath, "By 2004 half of the vendors that were in business in 2000 will not be anymore". Pressure builds on smaller vendors as IBM drops its prices to appeal to SMEs, and BEA and IBM squabble over the "real cost" of middleware. Open Source respectability increases; as webMethods bundles JBoss; and IBM "wields open source as a weapon", open source also pares vendor margins.

• Microsoft .NET wins friends - including Persistence; Novell points its Extend product at .NET, and meanwhile MS introduces BizTalk for Financial Services.

• Upgrades released by competitors include SwiftMQ 4.0, FioranoMQ 6.0 and FioranoTifosi 2002, SoftWired iBus//Mobile 3.1, Systinet and CapeClear "Generation 4".

• Although W3C warns that some standards are 18-24 months away, and Butler Group is conservative about adoption, Web services continues to be tacked onto all kinds of products including Fujitsu iFlow and Lombardi TeamWorks BPM tools.