Integration vendors get mixed marks in customer survey

A study that looks at how satisfied customers are with vendors that sell middleware integration software produced a mixed bag of results, with the cost and complexity of implementing integration projects among the biggest gripes.

In general, most users were happy with the way middleware vendors enable the basic tasks of integrating data at the database and application levels. But only a small percentage considered the products easy to use (8 percent) or were content with the cost of implementing such projects (13 percent), the study found.

“Respondents consistently chose the attributes relating to cost and implementation simplicity as the ones most vendors do not do well,” according to the report, commissioned by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), an industry trade group based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois.

The results are derived from responses from about 200 IT professionals using integration middleware at companies with at least $100 million in annual revenue and at least 100 employees. About half the survey’s respondents worked at companies with 500 to 10,000 employees and all types of industries were represented.

The ease-of-use concerns may reflect the fact that some integration products, particularly those based on emerging Web services technologies, are still relatively new and vendors are still refining their wares, said David Sommer, director of CompTIA’s e-commerce group.

“There are also concerns about costs and, obviously, this being a new class of products, the middleware vendors are trying to recover some of their development costs. The cost structures for the products are reflecting that,” he said.

Integration projects by their nature are complex, and the complexity is compounded by the fact that many systems in use weren’t originally designed to be linked together, said Thomas Murphy, a senior program director with analyst company Meta Group Inc.

Meanwhile, licensing costs for some middleware integration software can be “insane,” he said.

“We have statistics showing that the cost of a CRM – ERP (customer relationship management – enterprise resource planning) integration can be as much as the original system cost to deploy. It is expensive both for the products as well as developers. Standardization will push this down, and it has effectively removed some markets,” such as that for software adapters used to link applications, Murphy said.

IBM Corp.’s WebSphere Integration software was listed by most respondents as their main middleware integration platform (49 percent), followed by BEA Systems Inc.’s WebLogic Integration (29 percent) and Microsoft Corp.’s BizTalk Server 2002 (25 percent). Software from Sun Microsystems Inc., webMethods Inc., Sybase Inc. and Tibco Software Inc. were among those also named.

Asked to rate their overall satisfaction with their middleware vendor on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very satisfied and 1 very dissatisfied, the mean response was 3.43, indicating that customers are “mildly satisfied” with their vendor, the report states. Eighty-three percent rated their vendor a 4 or a 5, with 7 percent saying they were “very satisfied.”

An IBM spokesman said the concerns about cost and complexity should be alleviated by newer tools brought recently to market. The tools make better use of industry standards and automate certain tasks for developers, reducing the need for some of the low-level coding traditionally required for integration projects, said Jeff Henry, director of marketing for IBM’s WebSphere integration products.

Other findings in the survey were less clear cut. Asked to choose from a list of attributes which things their vendors did well, 49 percent of respondents said their vendor adhered to the major Web services standards, 48 percent said their software is scalable and 45 percent reported getting good hardware performance.

In a corresponding question about what things their vendor did not do well, only 14 percent checked adherence to standards, 27 percent picked scalability, and 23 percent indicated dissatisfaction with hardware performance.

“These (differences) between what they do do well and what they don’t do well … I believe part of that is the newness of the products. There’s some confusion as to what capabilities the middleware vendors deliver, and I think that shows there’s a need for some education,” CompTIA’s Sommer said.

Most respondents (69 percent) used the software for integrating enterprise applications, followed distantly by Web commerce integration, business-to-business e-commerce and content management, the survey found. More than half the users quizzed said they plan to purchase additional integration middleware, although only a third plan to do so in the next two years. The others had no time frame in mind.

The survey was conducted online in June and July for CompTIA by Survey.com. Of 645 surveys completed, 204 were qualified to take part in the entire survey. CompTIA plans to make public a summary of the results late next week.