Products will be integrated and have both a common install and common management tools. Featuring Oracle's BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) and ESB products, the suite represents a unique approach to addressing SOA deployments, according to Rick Schultz, vice president of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

"People have piece parts, but nobody's really put together a comprehensive SOA suite and certainly not one that's hot-pluggable and works with other vendors' middleware products," Schultz said.

Oracle uses the term "hot-pluggable" to mean interoperability with other vendors' middleware. Utilizing the suite with Oracle's application server, however, will be less expensive than using it on a rival application server. The suite's price is US$50,000 per CPU when deployed with an Oracle application server, or $65,000 per CPU when used with a rival application server. Oracle SOA Suite is available now.

With its suite, Oracle, like other companies, is betting that users want a single provider for SOA, said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an e-mail.

"Not only is Oracle offering this comprehensive-type approach to SOA, but it looks like IBM, BEA, Microsoft, and even SAP are gunning for the 'complete' SOA package. While the markets for SOA have matured, it's not clear that customers are looking for a one-stop-shop for SOA," Schmelzer said.