The chief technology officer of Irish Nasdaq-listed software company Iona Technologies has told siliconrepublic.com that the company is positioning itself through its Artix product strategy to serve the 20pc of IT spenders in large global corporations that account for 80pc of spending in the global IT industry.
On Monday Iona introduced Artix 4.0, the latest version of the company’s extensible enterprise service bus (ESB) which allows IT organisations to adopt service-oriented architecture (SOA) and in turn help generate a better return from existing and future IT assets.
The move comes as IT analyst IDC releases a study that shows SOA will continue to have a profound impact on the overall IT services market as implementation of this architecture often requires spending on a range of external services.
These services include consulting and systems integration and eventually outsourcing, application management, support and training. IDC forecasts that worldwide spending on SOA-based external services will reach US$8.6bn, experiencing a 138pc increase from US$3.6bn in 2005.
IDC projects that by 2010, global SOA-based services spending will reach US$33.8bn.
Talking to siliconrepublic.com in recent weeks about his company’s SOA ambitions, Sean Baker said that with the release of version 4.0 of its Artix product the technology is much more mature and fine-tuned to the requirements of CIOs and business executives in general.
“It gives serious advantages to business users — senior executives and not just techies — who have a vision of where they want their company to go.”
Asked about Iona’s overall product strategy and where traditional middleware mainstays of Iona such as Orbix will feature, Baker said: “Artix will become a bigger part of our revenue mix over time. That won’t in any way diminish our commitment to Orbix. What we have learned is that infrastructural products have a very long lifespan. Over 90pc of companies that have opted for Orbix in the first place are renewing their licences every year.
“In time, though, it would be our aspiration to make Artix a stronger share of the revenue mix than Orbix.
“Artix is aimed at the top 20pc of users of integration technology, typically large companies with a lot of different technologies running — people who care about how they integrate with the rest of the organisation. That 20pc represents 80pc of the spending on IT worldwide,” Baker said.
By John Kennedy
