Note: The original article was posted last February, but as there have been some quite interesting changes in trends recently—especially RedHat acquiring 3Scale—it made sense to repost this article with the latest trends.
It's been 3 years now since I published my first article on the open source middleware market.
Actually, for just 3 years, so much has happened and the trends are now totally different. I am thinking, should we still call it a ‘middleware market’?
RedHat acquiring 3scale and FuseSource, as well as MuleSoft announcing the Anypoint platform, are some of the key changes to be noted. The term ‘API’ has kind of diluted the terms SOA and ESB. Of course, Mulesoft and WSO2 are the key open-source API players to mention here.
Generally speaking, I feel the philosophy of microservices is felt in the market as well. I started this group on linkedIn called ‘Open Source Middleware’ close to 4 years ago, just because I was able to group products like Fuse ESB, Mule ESB, WSO2, Talend ESB, Open ESB, and Ultra ESB under a single umbrella called ‘Middleware’. Well, yes, they were clearly ESB’s. Look at these products (the companies actually) now and the kinds of solutions they provide. They are diversified and also unique to themselves.
They do have some commonalities, though–cloud offerings, integration capabilities (of course), services and support.
What I have done here is, with the help of Google trends and some popular communities, I have just analysed the keywords. Since open source is possible because of people, the contributors and the users, the activity found in Google (and the internet generally) are reflections of what people do with these products. (You can also go back to the old article to watch the current trend using the existing links).
Having talked about the changes we have seen in past 3 years, we just don’t have straightforward products to compare directly. So the following graphs show how some of these products have evolved.
The following graph reflects:
The slowdown of Apache ServiceMix
Growth of JBoss Fuse after FuseSource acquisition
Clearly consistent growth of Apache Camel
Apache Karaf picking up while Apache ServiceMix is going downwards
2. Mulesoft and some of their products/solutions:
The graph shows clearly everything—the announcement of the Anypoint platform, Cloud Hub, and the spiky growth of MuleSoft. It also looks like people straight away use the keyword Mulesoft rather than Mule ESB now :)
3. WSO2 & related products:
Well, it clearly shows the growth of WSO2 and its clear branding!
Let's go to the interesting part of the story: a graph which compares the top keywords from the graphs above (I have added JBoss Fuse as well, as it tops as a product by itself).
One thing is very clear from what is seen here–there are 3 major players in open-source integration and all of them are showing strong growth:
4. API Managers
Being in the API trend, it makes a lot of sense to analyse the trends for API Managers as well. Especially after hearing the news that RedHat acquired 3scale. :)
This graph makes very much sense: the WSO2 API managers launch & significant growth, the blue line shows the launch & growth of the Anypoint platform which is very API focused, the history & growth of 3scale, the growth of ApiAxle.
If you know of a few more products, you can compare them using the link below:
Ancillary:
Most of these have their own mailing list & forums; regardless the following snapshots show how they are looking in StackOverflow tags.
1. Apache Camel
Apache Camel – StackOverFlow
2. Mule
Mule – StackOverFlow
3. WSO2
WSO2 StackOverFlow
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