Alcatel-Lucent Poised to Make Splash in SOA Market with New Web Services Gateway

| Apr 16, 2009 | Application Infrastructure | Competitive Intelligence Reports

| Analyst: Michael Meehan

Current Perspective: Very Positive
Vendor Importance: High
Market Impact: Very High

Event Summary

April 15, 2009 - Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) has announced the OmniAccess 8550 Web Services Gateway (WSG) 3.0, a service-oriented architecture appliance that lets enterprises and service providers deliver an open and secure Web services environment for their customers’ business-to-business transactions and Web 2.0 services. WSG supports business process automation, Web 2.0 and cloud computing and can secure and govern how users interact online to prevent fraud, mitigate risk and maintain compliance.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Very positive on Alcatel-Lucent’s release of OmniAccess 8550 Web Services Gateway (WSG) 3.0. This is the first upgrade of the SOA networking appliance it debuted in December 2007; WSG 3.0 offers policy enforcement and audit trail monitoring on top of security for external facing Web services. This release achieves a level of maturity that positions Alcatel-Lucent to gain market share rapidly and add technology and channel partners.

• Vendor Importance: High to Alcatel-Lucent because it is seizing the opportunity to challenge IBM in the SOA appliance space. Cisco has been unsuccessful in its attempts to meet that challenge, and smaller vendors such as Layer 7 and Vordel have only achieved limited market penetration. Alcatel-Lucent has moved quickly to establish itself with buyers inside of application development shops, and the WSG 3.0 release progresses the company well beyond its introductory release of this product.

• Market Impact: Very high on the SOA networking appliance market, because application-oriented hardware looms as an integral element inside of an SOA governance and management infrastructure, providing security, policy enforcement and service monitoring. Alcatel-Lucent has established a name brand for itself as a carrier grade network equipment vendor, and it has a sales organization capable of selling WSG 3.0 into key vertical markets as well as a vast services division to implement these appliances in direct customer engagements. With the competitive functionality in the latest release, Alcatel-Lucent is poised to gain market share in rapid fashion..

Recommended Competitor Actions

• IBM should view ALU as a serious threat to its leadership position in the SOA networking device market. DataPower was a trailblazer in the market prior to its 2005 acquisition by IBM (See IBM Accelerates SOA Adoptions Through DataPower Purchase, October 19, 2005) and has held a dominant position in that market, since IBM made it a key part of the company’s overall SOA portfolio. There has always been the opportunity for an established networking vendor to challenge IBM, and ALU looks to be the one seizing it.

• Middleware and SOA governance vendors such as Oracle, Software AG and Progress should view ALU as a key technology partner. All of those companies compete directly with IBM and an SOA appliance from ALU’s WSG would make an ideal complement to those software solutions in many multi-product customer engagements.

• Cisco must act rapidly if it wants to gain any significant foothold in this market. It first tried to enter the space with an in-house product (See Cisco Disrupts Middleware Market with AON, June 22, 2005) and then via acquisition (See Cisco Moves into Middleware with Reactivity Acquisition February 23, 2007), but it has not gained traction with the application architect customer set. ALU looks to be learning from Cisco’s mistakes, giving Cisco precious little time until it becomes an afterthought in this market.

• B2B vendors such as Axway, SEEBURGER, Inovis, Sterling Commerce and GXS should investigate technical partnerships with ALU in order to enhance the performance capabilities of their large trading grids and their software as a service (SaaS) offerings. SaaS trading solutions in particular need to enhance the availability, reliability and scalability story they can tell to would-be customers.

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• Users looking to secure and govern high volume external Web services traffic should consider ALU alongside IBM, Layer 7 and Vordel. WSG 3.0 is a fully competitive product, built by an established networking vendor. Moreover, ALU fully understand this is application gear, to be used to improve the performance of and secure distributed Web services by the people responsible for the creation and maintenance of those Web services.

• A critical consideration in buying an SOA networking gear is its ability to work hand-in-hand with application tier management products such as Progress Actional, AmberPoint and SOA Software. Users should understand what kind of ecosystem they will have in place around these appliances as they put together your RFP. If users do not understand their larger policy management and service monitoring concerns, they will not be able to perform a proper comparison of the competing products in this space.

• Application development shops should not be reticent to shop for hardware. This is proven application infrastructure, and hardware offers compelling performance and security gains over traditional software, especially when high volume external traffic is involved. Users should not be put off by a different form factor. SOA appliances can play an important role in scaling and automating the governance of increasingly mission critical Web services.

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Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

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