Logicblaze FUSE and IONA Celtix products merge into IONA FUSE product line

Posted by Johan Strandler on Jul 30, 2007 09:40 AM

Community

SOA

Topics

ESB,

Open Source

Tags

IONA,

ServiceMix

Since the acquisition of Logicblaze in april, things have been quiet with regards to what shold happen with the Logicblaze open source SOA product FUSE. Last week however, IONA presented their open source strategy roadmap by announcing a merger of the former Logicblaze FUSE product and IONAs own Celtix product. The new open source product line will keep the FUSE brand and will consist of four product modules that can either be deployed together or independently:

• FUSE Message Broker - Implementing a JMS platform
• FUSE ESB - Based on the Apache ServiceMix project, a Java Business Integration (JBI) based ESB
• FUSE Services Framework - A pluggable service framework based on the Apache CXF project that implements the JAX-WS 2.0 specification
• FUSE Mediation Router - A solution for message routing based on the Camel project at the Apache Software Foundation, which is a tool for routing and process mediation combining POJO development with standard Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP)

The merger of the products has lead to some exclusion from both of the earlier products. From the Celtix product an AMQP implementation based on the Apache Qpid project has been removed. From the Logicblaze FUSE, a BPEL engine based on the Apache ODE project, an UDDI registry, the Jetty Web server and the Liferay portal has been removed.

Commenting in the FAQ on the removal of the AMQP and Qpid implementation, IONA "...choose to postpone their commitment for commercial support until they gain greater maturity and market traction". As for the removal of the BPEL engine in their new open source product line, IONA says that they "...encourages the use of any JBI-compliant BPEL engine with the FUSE ESB". For those that "...aren't happy with the open source options, IONA does provide the Artix Orchestration product".

Given the announcement, it seems that IONA has chosen a business model for open source similar to the one IBM uses for it's WebSphere product line, which includes one proprietary product line plus a complementary open source alternative through the WebSphere Application Server Community Edition. IONA now pushes the Atrix proprietary product line and the open source alternative FUSE.

From this announcement we see that the Java Business Integration (JBI) path started early on by Logicblaze has a firm continuation within IONA. The FUSE ESB should be able to function as the JBI based glue between FUSE products as well as to other products. Another interesting point is the inclusion of of the new Apache Camel project used in the FUSE Mediation Router product. Apache Camel is a rule based routing and mediation engine which provides a POJO based implementation of the Enterprise Integration Patterns.

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