NEWS

Hyperic Expands Open-Source SOA And Java Management

Partnerships with Iona and SpringSource Show that Open-Source in SOA Could Extend Beyond the ESB into Management.

Network Computing
December 18, 2007
By Andy Dornan

Open-source management startup Hyperic has announced technology and sales partnerships with two other growing open-source vendors: Iona and SpringSource. Iona is a specialist Enterprise Service Bus vendor which two weeks ago announced that it will re-architect its products around an open-source foundation. SpringSource is the new name for Interface 21, the company formed by the creators of popular open-source Spring Framework.

Spring is mostly used for Web-based applications, but it has recently attracted a lot of interest from enterprise SOA users and vendors and emerged as the leading Java framework. And though Hyperic is quick to point out that it isn't limited to SOA or to open-source, the announcements highlight the growing role of open-source in SOA. There are already open-source ESBs from MuleSource and Red Hat's JBoss (both existing Hyperic partners) as well as Iona, so does this signal new open-source options for SOA management?

It could. However, Hyperic isn't doing quite the same thing as vendors like AmberPoint and SOA Software. They have extended into functions like XML processing, whereas Hyperic's HQ line is focused squarely on management and monitoring. Its main competitors are the traditional management frameworks like IBM Tivoli and CA Unicenter, and it isn't specific to SOA or open-source, though the company does use openness as a major selling point. The theory is that because it's open-source, it can be customized to manage almost anything.

Iona and Hyperic are both using the same business model, which involves a combination of open-source and proprietary code. That means people who download the free versions don't get as much functionality as customers who buy licenses, so there's a much bigger incentive to pay for the product than there would be if they were just selling support. This is becoming increasingly common among open-source startups (XenSource is the best known example), thanks partly to the dominance of larger companies like IBM and Red Hat in the support market.