There will be a lot of jostling and shoving in this market in the months to come, I'm convinced of it. Here's my $0.02.
Digital I believe sold their ORB product to BEA, the guys who picked up Tuxedo. They seem pretty strong on the marketing side and have a client base (from Tuxedo) that gives them name-recognition in end-user cutomers.
NEO/JOE is small beer for Sun. They have greater potential to be a market-spoiler (with pricing initiatives etc.) than a serious leader.
Iona suffers from being first into the market. They have an installed base to worry about, which requires them to adopt offensive and defensive strategies simultaneously in a rapidly expanding and demanding market. Their report-cards tend to be good in the tech magazines, but most of the users I know have reliability concerns, although these may be transitory.
I have no information/opinion on HP.
I still believe that the VSGN strategy of OEM linkages is the strongest of all at this point. They will obviously need to watch their back - they are as vulnerable to their success as Iona is to theirs, i.e. if they were to have a glitch with one of their "big names" it would be disproportionately bad news. At some stage in the near future, they also need to take their message to end-users, which is a non-trivial task.
david
p.s. Centura? Hmmmmmm.... not in the same league, IMO. This one's at the starting gate of a distance race, CNTR is just a blind bet. |
