Either we disagree about first principles or I am taking your post to be an overly strong endorsement of Siebel.
Siebel has possibly been overly highlighted in this exchange. They are simply a convenient reference point since I have recently been investigating their product in some depth ... in fact, when not chatting here, I am in the process of doing a Siebel implementation.
Let me see if I can narrow the gap a little. Are any of the following statements true:
- You believe that there is not an architectural shift underway to a entirely web based architecture.
Truth is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but this one I would say that I agree with partially. Clearly, there is a trend toward providing web-enabled applications, but often the web-enabling is for a small subset of the overall functionality. There is certainly a movement toward browser clients whether accessed over the web or via LAN, but I am actually skeptical that this movement has become the dominant paradigm in current development, nor that it is likely to become the dominant one in the next few years. There are too many people who believe in the necessity of thick clients, at least a lot thicker than a browser. In fact, even those looking to use HTTP as the communications protocol are not infrequently using a specialized Java client rather than a browser at the client end.
- You believe that there is a new architecture emerging and the transition is mostly smooth and not disruptive.
There are new architectures, plural, emerging and nothing like any real consensus about the future. The trade press tends to emphasize whatever they consider to be "hot" at any given time, but the reality of what people are actually doing on the line is very diverse ... there is still a whale of a lot of mainframe batch COBOL being written. Some of these architectures are very disruptive ... in several senses of the word ... but I think the slowness of adoption and the rate of change are such that the overall pattern is better characterized as smooth ... rather like large numbers of water molecules bashing into each other in random directions produces the appearance of a still glass of water. Not that architectural progress is static, by any means. It may well be that five or ten years from now we will have a clearer sense of where all this is headed, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if it was somewhere other than where BEAS is pointing.
You believe that there is a disruptive new architecture emerging and Siebel is managing their technology in order to be succesful in the post-disruption market.
No, I merely think that Siebel has done a better job than anyone else I have looked at in achieving an N-tier architecture with a browser client. It happens to be an architecture which I think is particularly well suited to their problem domain and I think it will give them competitive advantage.
You believe that there is a disruptive new architecture emerging and Siebel will become a/the dominant supplier of enabling software.
No. At this point I see no sign of Siebel being willing to share.
Your answer will help me answer your post.
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