Governance capabilities are critical for Mercury. The company defines governance as the delivery of a predictable, consistent SOA, with control, visibility, and integrity to ensure the reuse of business services. Optimizing quality, performance, and availability of SOA applications also is part of governance, according to Mercury.

Key Systinet products cited include Systinet Registry, which is a UDDI-compliant registry for managing and publishing reusable business services and other SOA services, and Systinet Policy Manager, for streamlining policy creation and management and automating service validation.

The registry is key for Mercury, said analyst Frank Kenney, of Gartner. "It puts them squarely in the SOA world by offering a registry," he said.

"It gives them the big foot in the door that they've been looking for," Kenney said.

Systinet customers, meanwhile, get the stability of having a larger vendor behind Systinet's technology, Kenney said. "The big benefit is Systinet customers were always struggling with this very small vendor and its viability, always asking the question, [is Systinet] going to have the money to do the things they need to do," Kenney said.