Vendor Multi-Product Confusion

For some years I've been dealing with IBM SOA oriented products. About 3 years ago I had a chance to be in an IBM center and discuss their EBS product strategy with some top IBM SOA experts. As IBM had (and now has even more) products in the space, I was trying to make sense of where to position which product that was being pitched to our large enterprise IT. At the end of the conversation I was not successful.

Recently I was speaking to a top MDM expert about Oracle's product strategy in the MDM space. I was commenting on Oracle's "product", for which I had recently received a vendor pitch. He responded that Oracle has 5 products competing in the MDM space (and primary MDM tools).

Today I'm trying to produce an architecture model for a medium sized IT shop that purchased IBM DataPower to include within their existing SOA model (and fit with existing tools). In my search I came across this slide from IBM...



I see... one product provides fast connectivity, another connectivity, and another universal connectivity. Well, that clears it right up (sarcasm).

A number of the large vendors have gotten into the model of developing and/or buying up a number of products in a given technology space, and then figuring out what to do with them later. In the meantime they peddle the whole group, but can't provide a coherent strategy.

Good for me, more consulting and architecting to be done. But bad for the IT enterprises that have to figure out what's a fit versus the vendor salespeople ready to sell anything.