Progress makes another SOA buy

Application infrastructure vendor Progress Software has purchased Mindreef, a Hollis, New Hampshire, maker of tools for testing SOAs (service oriented architectures). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Mindreef news follows Progress' announcement earlier this week that it plans to buy fellow SOA vendor Iona Technologies.

There will be no interruption to support and service for existing Mindreef customers, and there are no plans at this time to shelve any products, according to the site. The company plans to hold a Webcast in mid-July to explain the strategy behind the deal to its client base.

A Progress executive said Mindreef's catalog is complementary to its own Actional series of SOA management tools.

"Mindreef has been very successful in the [SOA testing] tools and infrastructure for people in the pre-production stage," said Dan Foody, vice president of Actional products at Progress. "Actional has focused more on the production and deployment phases."

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with the SOA consultancy ZapThink, called the deal "a huge, positive move for Progress" via e-mail.

"Not only does it bolster their ability to deliver high-quality SOA, but it also helps to reinforce the message that SOA is not just about Web services integration and ESBs [enterprise service buses]," he wrote. "SOA is about changing the way we think of and consume IT capabilities, and to do so in an environment of high quality requires a robust platform."

ZapThink expects other SOA platform vendors to move in the direction of quality testing, perhaps through acquisitions of companies like as iTKO, he added.

Mindreef claims to have more than 3,000 customers at greater than 1,200 organizations, including 40 of the Fortune 100.

IDG News Service

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