IBM announced growth in its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Business Partner segment, citing more than 4,100 members to date. That number represents a leap from the program's start in June of 2005, when there were just 50 partners. One featured element of program is IBM's online SOA Business Catalog, a resource of SOA solutions for partners. The Catalog has grown, increasing from less than 300 reusable Web services in June of 2006 to more than 4,600 services today.
Partners have access to IBM-supplied solutions in the Catalog, plus solutions added by partners -- all of which must pass certain IBM validation tests. Currently, more than 74 percent of the solutions in the Catalog were contributed by IBM SOA Business Partners, who either provide them for free or sell them through the catalog.
