BEA is making waves with its Aqualogic SOA offering. Sun Microsystems acquires the leading provider of SOA management tools. And how do HP and IBM respond?

Both companies today sent out press releases stating that they will open "service centres" (HP) and "a detailed compilation of no cost education, workshops, software and services" (IBM).

Neither company tries very hard to cover up the fact that they have very little to offer to customers seeking a SOA solution.

"Third party software vendors and systems integrators can count on IBM best practices to help support their SOA customer engagements, and ultimately the greatest value proposition is for customers," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group.

"HP offers the two critical elements for using SOA to run IT as a business: management software and professional consulting services," HP said understatedly in its press release.

Users should be happy with the candour with which both companies admit the gaps in their product lineups. But the timing suggests that the press releases are primarily an attempt to cover up these gaps and that they are only now starting to think about the technology.

Going nowhere

Photo credit: José A. Warletta

Tags: SOA; Sun; IBM; HP