Comments on: Cisco buys XML startup Reactivity

By: The ADC

The ADC — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:15:12 +0000

Forum Systems is still out there, but the rumor mill says it may be snatched up by someone else in the XML space.

Cisco's AON is rumored to be dead. I suspect that either Reactivity will eventually replace Cisco's homegrown AON in its SONA initiative or that like it's ArrowPoint acquisition back in the day that Reactivity will stand side-by-side with AON and confuse the heck out of Cisco's customers.

Local Director? CSM? ACE? Three lines, three feature sets, three products, one market. Cisco needs to consolidate internally instead of trying to play IBM. It can pretend its a software company all it wants, and can message that to the press, but its a hardware company and I don't believe that fragmentation is good for itself, its customers or the market in general.

By: 1 Raindrop

1 Raindrop — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 03:26:22 +0000

Then They Were Fewer…

The market seems to have realized that XML security is important. Intel bought Sarvega, then IBM got its Data Power and now TMC reported Cisco Systems Inc., a leading supplier of Internet network equipment, has announced its intention to acquire Reacti…

By: z

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:52:42 +0000

Wonder how Cisco will position it's AON product with this reactivity announcement. AS AON was supposed to lead Cisco into the Application Oriented Networking world. Possibly hedging it's bets..

By: Rajeev

Rajeev — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 22:22:42 +0000

Smart move by Cisco! There are all indications that the market for such devices will really open up – especially as more and more organizations embrace the SOA wave and SOA/ESB infrastructure gets built out, one service at a time. SOA practitioners would be more than happy to hand off some of those XML crunching to the boxes rather than write software for it. As a poster observed earlier, IBM is quite strong in this space – but Cisco has enormous clout amongst the “infratrsucture heads” which alone should make it a strong competitor.

By: Mark O'Neill's Radio Weblog

Mark O'Neill's Radio Weblog — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:01:38 +0000

Congratulations to Reactivity…

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By: Matt Large

Matt Large — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:36:56 +0000

Smart move from CISCO, but they are a little late to the game. Intel snaped up Sarvega ages ago, and IBM bought Datapower which it has now bundled into the Websphere name.

Layer 7 seem to be available, but then they just build on Tarari supplied hardware, so perhapse they would be a better buy for someone looking to get into the SOA hardware business.

What IBM have done is very interesting, buy/build all the components from hardware through middleware and to management/development software for the whole end-to-end SOA system. I would look to AmberPoint being involved in a big M&A soon, although I couldn't think from which side :)