Financial crises and the leading edge of Glue

Everyone's hearing about the mess on Wall Street. In that context, this bit in Computerworld caught my eye:

 Paul Polishuk, president of the research group at Information Gatekeepers Inc., said that the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions will boost the market for IT firms that specialize in integrating networks."Because Merrill Lynch is going to be bought by Bank of America, their assets are going to have to be upgraded," he said. "And since Bank of America and Merrill Lynch are two very different businesses, a good deal of work will have to be done to get them integrated."

It made me think about some of the new "web oriented architectures" and how all of that will get effected. Now, ideally, the "web as platform" erases those problems, right? Yea, right (not)! It seems to me that "glue" companies might just be born in the fires of various cutting edge integration projects that this crisis will bring. After all, nearly every great software company was born in a "recession."2008-2009: the years of crisis that give birth to Glue software companies. Mark the dates.