Sitraka (formerly KL Group), a long time player in the Java space has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Quest Software, an application performance management company. The $51.7 million cash deal gives Quest a presence in the Java space, via Sitraka's PerformaSure and JProbe Java/J2EE performance analysis software.

Read the press release.

I wonder if they'll ruin the product the way Rational ruined Purify after they acquired it. I've never used any products of Quest software but it certainly seems like one of those overgrown 'software leaders' who no longer write programs but 'provide solutions' and whose software requies gigabytes of ram to launch it and an army of consultants to keep it going.

Sitraka had a nice piece of software going. I'm worried that Quest will ruin it by 'integrating' it with their 'grand solution' they way Rational 'integrated' most of their acquired software thus making it too bloated to be usable.

I guess, time will tell...

Actually in the database world Quest is known for their good products ( mainly for Oracle( lately for DB2 and SQL Server also )). I've use couple of their products and I can say that they are simple to set up and maintain. If they can deliver the same type of quality in their Java products like in their database products they will go long way. Good luck Quest.

P.S. I don't work for Quest or any of the companies that they own

I am worried about the same thing.

Sitraka has made some very good products like JProbe, and I have met some very good people at Sitraka that know there stuff. I hope they can keep up being part of Quest.

Steve Kolak

More likely, they'll just price everything excessively, like they did with TOAD.

I wonder what Quest make their money from so that they can do these kind of acquisitions. It surely cannot be that TOAD product, which IMO isnt too impressive in itself, and there are plenty of open source or low cost alternatives. Just have a look at TOra (tora.sourceforge.net) - an amazing piece of free software.

Shareplex, Spotlight( Now part of Quest Central ) and etc.

Looks like TORA isn't free really:
http://telia.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/tora/tora-1.2.4-windows.html

not free for use under Windows - which is legitimate IMO, and an insignificant side issue ;-). But the price is ridiculously low even there.
The Linux version is completely free, including source and all.

I just wonder about the future of Sitrakas JClass frameworks.... because they do not seem to be of Quest's interest.

How much would such acquisition have cost say 2-3 years back!! The Sitraka guys must be cringing.