"Of course, everyone pays lip service to that great, vast SMB in the sky. (small to medium business) But SMBs are the fruit higher up on the trees. They're fickle, they have limited budgets, and the people making purchase decisions wear multiple hats ? everything vendors hate."

"Hence, SMBs remain the great unserved (or underserved) market. One of the most consistent criticisms of SOA vendors is that they push expensive software and service arrangements on companies, promising more agility, but with no guarantee of successful outcomes. And, of course, these offerings are beyond the reach of the budgets of most smaller companies. SOA just has not been a small company thing."

"Open source, in combination with SOA, may bring SOA closer to the masses. On Monday, SOA Software and Red Hat announced a partnership in which SOA Software would supply governance and management capabilities to open source SOA projects."

"JBoss is an interesting story because it's main goal in life has been to make SOA-compliant middleware available to the masses. Its target market is the small business sector, as well as departments within larger enterprises. "

"More than anything, the open source convergence with SOA may be more of a disruptive force than anything else."

"A couple of days back, I had the opportunity to chat with Hugh Taylor, VP of marketing for SOA Software, and Shaun Connolly, VP of product management for Red Hat/JBoss, about such implications.
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