The recent launch of the Synapse project to create an open source web mediation framework for web services will highlight the growing importance of open source middleware, industry experts have predicted.

According to Gartner, the Synapse project unveiled by Sri Lankan start-up WS02 offers further evidence that open source technology will have a "massive impact" on application integration.

WSO2 and its partners, including Blue Titan Software, Infravio, Iona Technologies and Sonic Software, set out their proposal for Synapse to the Apache Software Foundation.

Synapse aims to develop components for a flexible web services transformation, management and routing platform providing enterprise service bus (ESB) capabilities.
"Synapse extends the list of planned open source ESBs which now includes Celtix from Iona and ObjectWeb, GlassFish from Sun Microsystems, the Mule ESB project, and an upcoming offering from JBoss," stated a newly published report written by Gartner analysts Massimo Pezzini, Paolo Malinverno and Daniel Sholler.

"The project's goal is to provide Soap-based connectivity, message transformation and routing, and Soap transport protocol bridging, which are all features Gartner considers typical of an ESB.

"This means it will compete with both commercial ESBs and similar open source projects."

However, the analyst firm warned that the success of Synapse will depend on real-world technology and adoption by enterprises and vendors.

Gartner indicated that it does not expect real-world Synapse technology to become available before the first quarter of 2006.

Instead it expects the Synapse product offering to initially provide an embeddable ESB core that the partners can extend with proprietary capabilities or integrate into their "closed source" products.

"The Apache Software Foundation's involvement gives the project credibility, but Synapse will face challenges in getting vendors with different agendas to co-operate on the same platform," the Gartner analysis stated.

"The key success factors for Synapse will be its ability to show quality of technical implementation, support from independent software vendors and systems integrators, adoption by open source distributors, and in real-world production deployments by the end of 2006."

Gartner advised enterprises not to be confused by the stream of announcements of open source ESBs. They should, however, monitor Synapse and other open source ESB projects, and particularly their adoption by independent software vendors and systems integrators.

"But do not make a commitment until the technology is available and proven in real-world projects," the analyst warned.

"Initially, Synapse's primary impact for customers will be limited to increased interoperability between the products of the vendors involved, and other vendors using its open source technology as a base for product development."