lustratus LiteBytes

As Steve noted in his last…

…post, ESB vendor Fiorano has just announced a component gallery. I should start by saying that I do find the notion of a marketplace for components attractive and as a concept it has been around for a long time. However, it has never taken off in any previous guise for any but the most technical components.

In the first instance, I think that the blocker is related to the generic SOA reuse issue that has been discussed here and elsewhere: Even within an organization you need to marshal all your technology and organizational resources to achieve reasonable reuse levels. When you try to create a business level component for reuse outside of the organization the problems are much greater again.

The second reason is around the business model: it is hard to make money selling enterprise-style components for $4k off the web. There simply isn’t the volume to support the necessary development and marketing spend. Clearly in the case of Fiorano, this is leveraging an existing business model and therefore may generate some attractive incremental revenue – which brings me to my third point.

Steve already commented on the very technical nature of the components listed. I would go further and wonder why these components are not already in the Fiorano box. Paying $4,000 for something as basic as allowing a single CPU machine (and since just about any machine you will use will be at least 2 CPU this is actually $8,000) to receive HTTP requests seems very high if I am already paying for what is clearly now a basic base product.

And finally, as was previously pointed out on this blog in connection with IONA’s claim to an extensible ESB, this ‘only buy what you want’ approach to introduces a level of complexity around what the product does way beyond the normal comfort level of purchasing managers. Unfortunately to some, it could appear that this approach is primarily about making the base price look attractive and then loading on the extras to solve any real business problem.

Ronan