Enterprise software

Earlier this week IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems and Tibco Software submitted a specification called WS-ReliableMessaging to the standards body OASIS as a proposed standard.

This is no surprise to people who have been tracking Web services specifications. But the move highlights some fundamentally different philosophies in how standards are created.

Here's why: OASIS already has a Web services standard??not a proposal??for reliable messaging. So why do we need this other one?

Depending on whom you ask, you'll get widely different answers.

Here's a rough summary of one camp: about four years ago some very smart … Read more

Listen to some industry pundits and the enterprise software industry is going the way of the auto industry. There will be a handful of global powerhouses; everyone else is a supplier, distributor, or niche provider within the industry "ecosystem."

A recent Gartner market share study for middleware??the back-end infrastructure software to run business applications--indicates that the big are indeed getting bigger.

"IBM continues to gain, Microsoft becomes a contender and Oracle continues to grow," is how Gartner analyst Joanne Correia summarized last year.

The strategy for these large vendors is to bundle several well integrated … Read more

"I'm glad George is doing what he is doing." So said Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz when asked about George Shaheen's unexpected promotion to Siebel's CEO post on Wednesday.

For those with short memories, Moritz, speaking at the VentureOne Summit in San Francisco, and Shaheen both sat on the board of Webvan, the now defunct grocery-delivery venture born in the dot-com heyday (a "fiasco," as Moritz put it). Shaheen was Webvan's CEO; Sequoia, led by Moritz, was a major investor. No hard feelings, though. Moritz didn't blame George; he spread it … Read more

When Mike Lawrie, a 26-year IBM veteran, was appointed as Siebel Systems's chief executive last year, he had a clear mandate.

"I've spent most of my career doing turnarounds at IBM. That's what I've done and, yes, that's exactly what I signed up to do here," Lawrie told CNET News.com in October. "Almost every aspect of how you go about transforming an institution needs to be addressed at Siebel Systems," Lawrie said.

Roughly six months later, Lawrie is now out of a job and Siebel is warning that it will … Read more

It's largely been a war of words so far. But on Tuesday Apple has won the first real battle over Microsoft in the race to bring better search to desktop PCs.

Apple said it will ship its new operating system code-named Tiger on April 29. Tiger includes new search technology called Spotlight.

The update makes it far easier to find data stored locally on a Mac, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs claims: "Tiger's groundbreaking new features, like Spotlight and Dashboard, will change the way people use their computers, and drive our competitors nuts trying to copy them,&… Read more

An open-source software company called ActiveGrid is challenging the established thinking among builders of large-scale business applications.

The premise of ActiveGrid, which released an early version of its server software and tools on Monday, is that application servers based on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) specification are no longer required. Company Peter Yared was even handing out "No J2EE" pins at LinuxWorld earlier this year.

Instead, Yared proposes building applications with scripting languages, such as Python or PHP, which are easier to use than Java but typically not used for high-end applications. ActiveGrid's solution for building … Read more

Making money the old-fashioned way in the technology business, by selling hardware, software and networking gear, isn't the only way to make a profit. Just take a look at what some of the world's largest tech makers are up to.

Microsoft on Monday said it has begun to license out technology developed in its research labs to other companies.

The move makes sense: Microsoft spends in excess of $6 billion annually on R&D and can't possibly commercialize every idea its researchers devise.

IBM has already learned how to profit from its engineer's know-how. The … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems' outspoken president and chief operating officer, is a big fan of subscriptions. Sell a product as a subscription and you won't get as much money up front, but you'll get a series of payments stretching as far into the future as you can convince your customer it's worth paying.

Sun sells subscriptions for its Java Enterprise System server software and Solaris operating system, but a favored Schwartz illustration of the power of subscriptions is giving away cell phones then selling phone service.

Next up: cars. General Motors sells a subscription service called … Read more

On the conference call announcing Computer Associates' purchase of Concord Communications, the first question was about the cost ($330 million plus $20 million in debt). Why, a financial analyst asked, was CA paying a 70 percent premium over Concord's stock price, particularly given that Concord just said it will miss its first-quarter numbers?

The answer, although straight-forward, reveals a lot about the "new CA" and the management team running the show.

With the acquisition, CA can fill out its Unicenter line with network management tools. It also gains significant number of people with networking skills, particularly in … Read more