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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert Scott Diver who wrote (52276)	7/21/2002 11:22:54 AM
From: Robert Scott Diver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

"Companies that sell software that have any real meaning any more will be reduced to MSFT, IBM and ORCL." Message 17764360

To: Robert Scott Diver who wrote (52276)	7/21/2002 1:38:52 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Respond to of 54805

Is it your view that application servers are the only middleware? No, although I can't readily think of any form of middleware that has achieved any real dominance or even wide use other than app servers and distributed transaction tools. Sure, BEA has tools, but what percentage of real world applications are built with them? One must remember that companies are full of legacy applications which are not going to be thrown out over night. Thus, there is a substantial market for connecting those applications and there is a potential market for selling a new appserver or whatever into a company for supporting new applications, but too much inertia for mass conversion. Middleware can do a good job of: * providing a shared repository; * connecting disparate applications; * business process management; * conversion between differing standards; and * maintaining transaction integrity between applications. None of those do much toward replacing existing applications or forcing them to be rearchitected beyond development of an appropriate API. Also I wonder if you feel the SEBL SW is independent of the operating systems and middleware? Not independent of the OS, since it needs to be adapted to run on any particular OS, but largely independent of the middleware beyond having provided an API. They do provide hooks for a small number of products to be used in conjunction with their software, like Resonate for load balancing, but I don't see that as having their architecture dictated by middleware. Will customers be willing to pay SEBL for function they have already paid for in other products? This has been a challenge to Siebel from the beginning since companies often had some type of primitive customer mangement in their ERP system and might have other products like help systems which overlap with a part of Siebel's functionality. But, I see the real challenge here being movements like SAP developing CRM which might be "good enough" for someone who likes getting everything from the same vendor. I don't see the challenge coming from middleware. Did you assume I "didn't know anything about the architecture of the products involved...." because I didn't agree with you? No, it was because I just don't see any substance out there to support the idea.