Hewlett-Packard to acquire Talking Blocks

By John Hogan, SearchWebServices.com News Editor 04 Sep 2003 | SearchWebServices.com

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To further bolster its presence in the market for Web services management, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced Tuesday that it will acquire service-oriented architecture (SOA) specialist Talking Blocks Inc.

San Francisco-based Talking Blocks is a privately held company, so financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"This looks like a quick and dirty solution to a pervasive challenge of hooking together new technology -- emerging Web services and Web-based applications -- and business processes," said Rich Ptak, president and analyst with Ptak & Associates Inc., Amherst, N.H. "The demand will increase as progress is made toward widespread acceptance of services-based applications."

HP said that among the strengths of Talking Blocks' Service Oriented Architecture technology is its ability to connect and integrate Web and legacy services. It also manages the relationships of services and their users and controls their interactions.

SOAs are software components that can be exposed as services on a network. They can also be reused for different applications. Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP plans to blend Talking Blocks' integration and SOA expertise with HP's OpenView systems management platform.

Ptak said he sees the Talking Blocks deal as a "catch-up move" for HP to keep pace with IBM Corp.'s Tivoli and Computer Associates' Unicenter management platforms, and it will be good for HP customers as well. "The acquisition will give HP a significant boost in its ability to support customers integrating applications and services," he said.

On its Web site, Talking Blocks touts its platform partnerships with IBM, Microsoft and Netegrity Inc. Ptak said he doesn't expect that to change, "since it is in everyone's best interests to cooperate to provide management capabilities."

A Talking Blocks competitor, Mountain View, Calif.-based Actional Corp., applauded the move as evidence that large software vendors such as HP are taking Web services management seriously.

"We see this acquisition as a strong positive for the industry," James Phillips, chief strategist and a senior vice president at Actional. "Not only does it demonstrate the importance of managing Web services in service-oriented architectures, but it also paves the way for the big management vendors trying to deliver on utility- and adaptive-computing initiatives. You can't execute on these grand computing visions without managing Web services."

HP has been active recently in the Web services management arena. In July, the company submitted its HP Web Services Management Framework to the OASIS standards body for review. And in August, HP acquired integration consultants Extreme Logic Inc., which specialized in helping large companies implement Microsoft's .NET developer technology.

The Talking Blocks acquisition will be complete later this month, and the company's products will be available through OpenView software channels, HP officials said. Ptak said HP plans to retain all "relevant" Talking Blocks employees, but the company gave no specific numbers. Talking Blocks was founded in 2000.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Featured topic: SOA crash course

Article: HP releases Web services management spec

Tip: What is service-oriented architecture?

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