LogicBlaze Launches Open-Source SOA Stack

Fledgling software developer LogicBlaze on Monday launched an open-source, service-oriented architecture (SOA) stack that integrates Apache database, messaging, orchestration and enterprise service bus (ESB) technologies.

LogicBlaze aims to work closely with VARs and ISVs to promote its Fuse stack, which the Marina del Rey, Calif.-based company is positioning as a less expensive alternative to proprietary middleware.

Like many commercial open-source software companies, LogicBlaze plans to profit from selling support services around software that it offers free. Fuse is available for download on LogicBlaze's Web site.

"By making the license cost go away, our partners are able to deliver a much more economically feasible solution to their customers," said LogicBlaze Chairman Winston Damarillo. "[BEA Systems'] AquaLogic and Tibco are way too expensive. We provide a very good alternative."

Fuse's flexibility is even more attractive than its price for partner eCube Systems, a legacy systems modernization firm in Conroe, Texas. To ease integration projects, eCube initially bought commercial Java Connector Architecture (JCA) software. That turned into a pricey exercise in frustration, according to eCube Vice President of Product Management Peter Marquez.

"We felt sort of isolated and alone in dealing with the complexity of the other system," Marquez said. "Open source made more sense. We wanted something with a broader community behind it."

On its own, ECube had begun using some of the Apache software that LogicBlaze incorporated into Fuse, such as the Apache ServiceMix ESB. But what the company really wanted was a complete platform of the sort that Fuse provides.

"Fuse really solved the problem of completely integrating all of these open-source capabilities," Marquez said. "From a licensing perspective, it makes a lot of sense for us because we can embed the Fuse technology in our technology."

The Fuse stack incorporates Apache's ServiceMix ESB, ActiveMQ messaging system, Derby database, Ode orchestration engine and jUDDI directory server. It also includes IBM's WebSphere Application Server Community Edition, bundled through an OEM agreement. LogicBlaze provides Fuse free and sells subscriptions to its Core Network support offering. Production licensing for applications deployed on Fuse start at $5,000 per year, per server.

LogicBlaze backer Damarillo is a serial entrepreneur with deep faith in the open-source model. His last venture was Gluecode Software, an open-source infrastructure software maker that IBM acquired last year. LogicBlaze is the first of several new companies that Damarillo is incubating under the umbrella of holding company Simula Labs. All will offer software built around a shared stack of open-source components.

"The key advantage of open source is rapid market adoption," Damarillo said. "The beauty of it is that by the time you build a company around it, the technology has already matured."