WebMethods is adding Cerebra's semantic metadata management technology to its business integration suite in order to stand out in the crowded service-oriented architecture software market.

As more customers look to adopt SOA, an approach to developing and managing IT systems through reusable technologies, vendors are falling over each other to acquire more SOA expertise to enhance the capabilities of their existing offerings. For instance, IBM arlier this month made its third SOA acquisition picking up Webify Solutions, a small SOA development and deployment software vendor focused on the healthcare and insurance industries.

WebMethods announced Monday that it had purchased the bulk of Cerebra's assets for an undisclosed sum and plans to embed the privately-held vendor's technology into future versions of Fabric, its SOA suite. The Fabric suite brings together tools to help users improve the management of their business processes within an SOA framework and gain a better understanding of how their existing IT assets, including Web services, function and interoperate.

The Cerebra technology will become WebMethods' metadata repository, a central store of descriptive information that captures, defines and maintains a company's IT assets. Cerebra's specific area of expertise is in semantic information. This provides additional context to metadata by documenting the interrelationships between IT assets, helping users more easily assess the likely impact of any changes on those assets.

WebMethods expects the Cerebra technology to debut in the next major release of Fabric, Version 7.0, which is due to ship in December.

WebMethods is also looking to make the Cerebra technology available to third parties via future reselling partnerships in areas including product portfolio management, master data management and financial compliance and assurance.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.