This morning, Iona announced its acquisition of LogicBlaze, and most importantly, that the core team behind Apache ServiceMix and ActiveMQ are transitioning to Iona. This combination makes a lot of sense to me. Iona and LogicBlaze are both proponents of open source, pragmatic about SOA, early adopters of Java Business Integration, and ‘cooperative competitors’ — Iona’s Celtix incorporates both ActiveMQ and ServiceMix (which I think is more recent, but could be mistaken).
Last fall/winter, I did work some with LogicBlaze, and this excerpt from the press release definitely reflects points (see my emphasis) I heard firsthand from LogicBlaze customers and ServiceMix adopters:
"The ability to deliver enterprise-level support to companies deploying Open Source technologies is critical as an increasing number of global 2000 customers incorporate Open Source into their performance-demanding, distributed SOA environments. The acquisition of LogicBlaze is based upon of IONA’s vision that successful SOA deployments will involve the use of multiple technologies, including many from the Open Source community. IONA is committed to supporting its customers’ desire to incorporate these technologies in their SOA environment.
"As a greater number of large IT organizations embrace the use of Open Source technology to support their mission-critical applications, they want to know that the innovation of Open Source is paired with world-class service and support from the development stage through deployment," said James Strachan. "This is a philosophy shared by IONA and LogicBlaze.""
I think this is good news for Iona, LogicBlaze, and most importantly, the enterprise.
[Disclosure: LogicBlaze is a (not so past) client of Elemental Links.]
