Progress Acquires Web Service Management Company

Progress Software continued its buying spree on Thursday, purchasing Actional, a company specializing in application-infrastructure software that helps VARs create, deploy and manage business applications.

Actional, which will become a part of Progress Software's Sonic Software unit, is expected to boost the company's overall service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy largely on the strength of its Web services management software.

"Enterprises are moving to SOAs en masse. But the moment they have deployed their second Web service, they realize the challenge they have in gaining visibility into the network in terms of how it operates, what levels of service they can deliver and monitoring it," says Tim Dempsey, vice president of marketing with Sonic Software. "This is exactly the technology we have bought."

Some analysts see the move as well-timed on the part of Progress Software given user interest in SOAs, although they note the vast majority have yet to implement applications that fully exploit SOAs.

"We are seeing a trend of acquisitions on the part of companies targeting the SOA space. Even though most Global 2000 organizations have yet to push forward with significant SOA apps for the most part, they are evaluating the benefits that accrue with this sort of development paradigm shift," says Melinda Ballou, program director in charge of IDC's Application Life-Cycle practice.

Dempsey says Actional will be a good fit with Sonic given their similar philosophies toward supporting a number of different programming platforms, including Java and .Net, as well as how SOAs need to interoperate with a range of different technologies.

Progress Software officials believe the Actional deal makes it easier for its integrators and resellers to incorporate their products with Sonic's, thereby being able to offer a broader range of SOA infrastructure technologies and solutions.

Actional's Looking Glass product is able to automatically discover services and message flows throughout an SOA-based network, and then map and monitor each step giving administrators visibility and insight. The technology is capable of capturing several usage and performance metrics for governance and process optimization, company officials explain.

Another Actional product, called SOAPStation, is an SOA "intermediary" designed to reduce the costs and complexity of deploying and managing SOA-related projects. The product provides policy-based security and access control, along with service-level agreement management and enforcement.

Sonic Software officials see Actional's Web services management software as complementary to its Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) software, which competes against similar technologies from several companies, including IBM.

Progress Software acquired Actional for approximately $32 million in cash and shares of Progress common stock. The deal is expected to close as soon as it meets the approval of both companies' boards.