June 29, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Business as usual for Microsoft and Sun
Longtime enemies Microsoft and Sun Microsystems recently made friends through an arrangement that settled disputes such as the companies' battle over Microsoft's use of Java. Supposedly, this agreement will lead to a new era of cooperation between these industry giants.
So why, then, is Microsoft still not participating in this week's JavaOne show in San Francisco? Wouldn't it be a show of cooperation to have Microsoft at the event, the biggest Java development event of the year? Wouldn't this be at least a chance for Microsoft to show how its .Net platform and Java can work together?
When pressed for a reason why Microsoft would be a no-show, despite having recently aligned with Sun, Microsoft representatives would only say the company has not participated at JavaOne before and wouldn't now, either.
'In the past, Microsoft has not participated in JavaOne and this year is no different. We are excited about future opportunities for our companies to work more closely together,' was the official statement. Well, um, wouldn't JavaOne have been a great place to publicly show some camaraderie?
There is, for what it's worth, a session at JavaOne entitled, 'Web Services Interoperability and Performance: Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition and .Net.' So it looks like there is at least a bone being thrown to developers at the conference looking to use both technologies.
But was the agreement between Sun and Microsoft more of a way for Sun to pick up a $1.6 billion to settle patent and anti-trust issues than it was for the two vendors to boost cooperation? If it is more than that, why isn't Microsoft participating in JavaOne?
Looks like business as usual to me. It has been recognized in the industry that both .Net and Java will remain dominant platforms and that one is not likely to defeat the other. It is disappointing that Sun and Microsoft are not using JavaOne as a public forum for airing out and solving interoperability issues.
(I posted this entry for Paul Krill, who is blogging live from JavaOne.)
Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 29, 2004 05:43 AM
June 24, 2004 | Comments: (0)
The story behind the story: AOL's enterprise IM exit
When AOL announced earlier this week that it would abandon its AIM Enterprise Gateway product, the company also said it struck a deal with instant messaging gateway technology vendor IMlogic to help move existing AIM Enterprise Gateway users to IMlogic's offering.
This agreement gave AIM Enterprise Gateway customers a free license to IMlogic's IM Manager gateway product; a free license to IMlogic's IM Linkage for developing IM apps; and free migration services to substitute the AIM Enterprise Gateway with IM Manager and install IM Linkage.
"The IMlogic products will cover our existing users for their current functionality and beyond," AOL's Brian Curry said, in an interview with IDG News Service reporter Juan Carlos Perez.
This struck me as a curious move given that AOL's AIM Enterprise Gateway was built by IMlogic's competitor FaceTime Communications. From my perspective, wouldn't it make more sense for AOL to cut this kind of deal with FaceTime? That way, AOL's customers could stay with the same root technology, essentially upgrading from a single network solution that FaceTime built for AOL to an offering that supports multiple networks.
"All the AIM Enterprise Gateway is our IM Auditor product with support for only AOL's network in it," said Christopher Dean, FaceTime's senior vice president of marketing and business development.
Dean said that IMlogic paid for the migration deal with AOL.
"This is a paid endorsement of IMlogic and doesn't guarantee IMlogic a single customer," he said. "AOL and IMlogic came to a monetary agreement."
Jon Sakoda, vice president of products at IMlogic didn't have a comment about the financial terms to the deal, if there were any. He didn't like the suggestion that IMlogic was paying for advertising with the migration plan.
Maybe this isn't such a shocking charge. Maybe these kind of migration deals are always a business arrangement, rather than a technology decision.
I haven't heard back yet from AOL, so I can't yet add their side to the story. But my guess is AOL will provide a diplomatic response that focuses on the benefits of IMlogic's products.
IMlogic's Sakoda said his company's migration agreement with AOL is the best option for AIM Enterprise customers because AOL is putting its resources behind it.
"AOL is contributing network services, migration services, a free license for network services exclusively for customers who upgrade to [IMlogic's] solutions," Sakoda said.
"Customers are migrating off of the AIM Gateway but they are getting more functionality and more compliance and management features," Sakoda added. "And they are getting this whole world of application development with our IM Linkage technology."
Whatever the terms of the deal actually were, the race is now on for AOL's former customers.
FaceTime has announced its own migration special for customers of the AIM Enterprise Gateway, Dean said.
"We've matched and exceeded [AOL's and IMlogic's] offer," Dean said.
FaceTime's offer gives a free upgrade to its IM Auditor, free migration services, and preferred pricing, Dean said.
"We will win the vast majority of these migrations," Dean said. "It is the easiest migration and it is the same technology. Some customers are miffed at presumption that they would want to switch products."
He was quick to add that FaceTime still has a "very strong" relationship with AOL, and has several joint initiatives in the works.
AOL's enterprise effort didn't succeed because it was a single network solution, Dean said.
"Enterprises are heterogeneous network environments so selling a single network solution doesn't meet pain points of the enterprise," he said.
AOL has said it has about 150 AIM Enterprise customers.
Dean said that FaceTime has spoken with every customer, and has already had more than five migrations.
When asked how FaceTime execs reacted to see AOL officially sanctioning migration to its competitor's product, Dean said "I don't know that we were completely happy about it. But it is an outcome that IMlogic will have spent a lot of money and got almost nothing."
Posted by Cathleen Moore on June 24, 2004 05:18 PM
June 17, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Along with the unveiling of Apple's 2.5GHz, G5 desktops came the news that there will not be a G5 notebook. At least not right away.
The G5 chip is just too darn hot and uses too much power to live in the close confines of a notebook.
So despite the promise by Steve Jobs that there would be such a beast it is not going to happen this year.
Beyond the actual thermal problems who is at fault here?
Is it Apple for not engineering an overall mobile notebook design that will accommodate a faster chip or is it chip builder IBM for not creating a mobile chip that puts out less watts and less heat?
After all Intel does just that, producing desktop chips and then following up with a mobile version about 6 months later that meets the more stringent themal requirements of a notebook.
After talking with both companies, editor-at-large Ed Scannell spoke with IBM and I spoke with Apple, it appears each side points the finger at the other. But no matter.
The bigger question is are there long-term repercussions if Apple doesn't resolve the problem quickly?
What of power users who need mobility but also demand performance for future versions of PhotoShop or ProTools? Will they have to turn to a Windows or Linux notebook to get the performance they need?
If Apple wants to continue to offer enterprise IT the complete solution they demand from one vendor, from server to desktop to notebook and beyond, it had best resolve the problem.
In an all or nothing world the repercussions of not doing so could be disastrous.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on June 17, 2004 04:02 PM
June 16, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Wireless carriers play dodge ball
If you ask me, the telecommunications industry is old school corporate America still not used to working in a very open society.
Whereas some of the biggest high tech firms, IBM, Siebel, SAP, Oracle on the software side, Cisco, Dell and Hewlett Packard on the hardware side will respond to a reporter's question about the most difficult of news events, the telecom industry is still into a form of stonewalling.
The recent virus on a Nokia cell phones is the latest example. I called five wireless carriers, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, and Verizon to ask what they intend to do about viruses being transmitted through their networks and got a uniform dodge.
In three days of waiting for a response AT&T was still looking for the right per-son to talk about this, Cingular was working on a "statement" which I still haven't received while Sprint, like AT&T Wireless, is looking for someone who could speak to this issue.
Nextel also called on the third day to say they did not "want to participate in this story because we never heard this has happened and we don’t have anybody that can talk to that and so we are looking in to it and will get back to you."
Very old school indeed.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on June 16, 2004 01:37 PM
June 09, 2004 | Comments: (0)
You know something's hot when Google rumors fly
One facet of enterprise search that has historically fallen beneath the vendor radar is now gaining attention from some of the big names in technology. Desktop search lately has been grabbing headlines through the whispered plans of companies like Microsoft and Google. And today, Ask Jeeves revealed its own plan to pursue the desktop search market by acquiring desktop search specialist Tukaroo.
Everybody knows that Microsoft's current desktop search capability isn't very capable. How long will that dumb dog sniff and scratch at the ground before breaking the news to me that what I want and know is there cannot be retrieved? Bad dog. Part of Longhorn's promise is better desktop and file search, but that won't be until 2006 at the earliest. Also there's been a rumor linking Google to the desktop space. Google is reportedly cooking up a desktop search product that actually works.
But, aside from the big name plans, several companies are already doing desktop search quite well. X1 Technologies is one. At the Mobile Showcase in Palm Springs last month I saw a demonstration of their X1 Search product that brought howls of approval from the conference audience. The demonstration showed exactly what X1 officials claimed: that the search technology can retrieve e-mails, files, documents, attachments and Outlook contact information as fast as you can type.
Other players in the space include dtSearch, which has a line of search products that includes dtSearch Desktop, and several e-mail search tools such as ISYS:email.search from ISYS/Odyssey Development and Stata Labs' Bloomba. A bigger name targeting the desktop is Terra Lycos, which released a couple months back HotBot Desktop, which is a Web browser toolbar that can search the Web, e-mail, files and RSS feeds.
There's already been at least one fatality in this emerging space. Scopeware, which had a desktop search tool dubbed Vision that combined desktop and RSS searching, ceased operations in mid May.
I'm sure there are others I haven't heard of yet.
So, while we collectively wait for the next moves from Google and Microsoft, happy desktop hunting!
Posted by Cathleen Moore on June 9, 2004 12:38 PM
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