Cisco ACE Replacement Strategy: Choosing the right XML Gateway

XML Gateways are a core component of SOA deployments.  SOA testers, developers, architect are intimately familiar with XML Gateways as a central component for enabling XML Security, Integration, Identity and Management.

Recently, Cisco published End-of-Life (EOL) and End-of-Sale (EOS) notices to its customer base for the Cisco ACE XML Gateway.

Forum Systems pioneered the XML Gateway Appliance space in 2001 with the launch of its product Forum Sentry.  A number of vendors followed this path by morphing their existing technologies to the XML Gateway Appliance space.  Reactivity, the company Cisco acquired for a $135M in 2007  was one such company that changed direction to enter this space.

In 2003, Network Computing published a bake-off between vendors in XML Gateway space.  Reactivity (acquired by Cisco), DataPower (acquired by IBM) and a number of other vendors including Forum Systems, Westbridge, Verisgn were also a part of the assessment.  Looking back at this vendor assessment, one can see a clear trend:  companies that changed their directions to come after the pioneer (Forum Systems) eventually gave up on the space.

Although the strategy of a company changing direction to follow a viable market seems like a good idea at that time, it has profound implications in the future.  When a product is not built ground-up to address a specific market, architectural comprises ensue that result in the demise of such products in the future.  The key factor in picking any technology solution is to identify the leaders and the followers.

New vendors continue to follow the leader in the XML Gateway space, by changing their ESB products to look like XML Gateways, however, they lack the innovation and intellectual property established by the leader.  See fore example, Forum System Issued Patent 7,516,333 for XML Security Gateway.

As corporations replace their XML Gateway from Cisco ACE or any other non-patented product, they should consider the following points:

1. Select a patented product or face replacement issues as the patents are enforced.
2. Pick an XML Gateway and not a product that is like an ESB/Application server.
3. Demand an Independent Security Assessment on the ENTIRE XML Gateway.
4. Validate feature/function availability and innovation leadership.
5. Demand flexible replacement costs and options.

For a detailed article on Cisco ACE replacement strategy, see Cisco ACE Gateway EOL:  How to Pick a Replacement XML Gateway.

For Cisco ACE Replacement Programs, see Cisco ACE Replacement.

SOA Consolidation

Reactivity was purchased by Cisco for a cool $135MM, making it the largest acquisition in the SOA space. DataPower (aquired by IBM for ~$105MM and Systinet (acquired by Mercury for ~$102MM) were the other >$100MM acquisitions. Other smaller ones include Sarvega (acquired by Intel for ~$40MM), Conformative (acquired by Intel for ~$32MM), Infravio (acquired by webMethods for ~$38MM) pretty much consolidated the space leaving Forum Systems, Layer7, SOA Software and Amberpoint as the independent private companies. Further consolidation is inevitable.

The second wave of SOA Infrastructure startups in underway. Andrew Nash, CTO of Reactivity, started a company focused on XML identity. Sonoa Systems is the Next Gen XML Infrastructure Company still in stealth mode and is funded by SAP Ventures, Norwest Ventures, and Bay Partners.

Ofcourse, all XML/SOA infrastructure companies will require extensive SOA Testing to make their products enterprise ready. They will have to deal with the extensive web services/XML standards such as WS-Security, its profiles such as User Name, X.509, Kerberos, SAML tokens as well as SOAP signatures and encryption. Starting XML/SOA infrastructure companies from scratch will enable such new startups to build ground up on relatively newer and useful standards such as WS-Policy, WS-SecureConversation, etc. The second cycle will be shorter with exits taking 3-4 years unlike the 5+ years needed by the 1st wave of SOA consolidations.

For an interesting interview on Sonoa by Eric Knorr, see this video clip.