GemStone Systems, a leading provider of software for e-business solutions and formerly a business unit of Brokat Technologies Inc., announced today a definitive agreement to be acquired by a SGroup Holdings USA, Inc., a privately held investing company."

Check out the FAQ for Customers on their web site. Some interesting information there about the GemStone/J product and GemStone/S products.

I really like the quote in the FAQ: "Since the merger, Gemstone Systems has become the most profitable business unit within Brokat." Makes you wonder... :)

Press Release
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SGROUP HOLDINGS USA, INC. SIGNS DEFINITIVE AGREEMENT TO ACQUIRE GEMSTONE SYSTEMS BUSINESS UNIT FROM BROKAT TECHNOLOGIES INC.

BEAVERTON, Ore. - August 15, 2001 GemStone Systems, a leading provider of software for e-business solutions and formerly a business unit of Brokat Technologies Inc., announced today a definitive agreement to be acquired by a SGroup Holdings USA, Inc., a privately held investing company. The acquisition will enable GemStone Systems to better focus on its core competency of developing technologically advanced, rapidly deployable mission-critical products based on distributed object technologies.

The new GemStone Systems will retain all the intellectual property and the core engineering team responsible for creating both the GemStone/S (Smalltalk) and GemStone/J (Java) products, the GemStone support teams, and core GemStone management.

"We are enthusiastic about GemStone's track record of profitability, its current technology and its future product plans," said Dan Ware, President, GemStone Systems. "We look forward to serving both our current and new customers as we move ahead with our "new" company."

GemStone Systems, headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, will continue to develop new e-business software products based on the persistent cache architecture (PCA), GemStone’s shared, distributed object cache. GemStone’s e-business software products are based on open Java and XML technologies.

GemStone Systems will continue to build Smalltalk solutions for its 125 plus current customers by enhancing the current version, GemStone/S 5.1. GemStone plans to release the GemStone/S versions 6.0 and 7.0 suite of products over the next two years. The GemStone/S product has been in production use for more than 13 years, and more than 20 value-added resellers (VARs) have committed to this platform for their long term business needs.

GemStone customers are Global 2000 companies, independent software companies and e-business companies building large-scale, complex applications. GemStone’s architecture, people and products are driving e-business today through Internet portals, telecommunications services and billing integration, brokerage, banking and customer care, retail, and real-time inventory management. GemStone serves customers in the financial, telecommunications, ASP, ISP and other industries. Its customers include MoneyGram Payment Systems, Inc., Visa International, BellSouth Telecommunications, Ingram Micro, Chrysler Corporation, Sony Interactive, Texas Instruments, Florida Power and Light, and Systems & Computer Technology.

About GemStone Systems, Inc.
GemStone Systems, Inc., was founded in 1982. Since shipping its first Smalltalk application in 1986, GemStone has been the leader in distributed object technology for enterprise applications. GemStone’s Persistent Cache Architecture (PCA) for Java was developed in 1997.

GemStone’s architecture, people and products are driving e-business today through Internet portals, telecommunications services and billing integration, brokerage, banking and customer care, retail, and real-time inventory management. GemStone serves customers in the financial, telecommunications, ASP, ISP and other industries.

Headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, GemStone sells and supports its solutions through its US sales offices and a worldwide network of distributors. For detailed company information, please visit www.gemstone.com.

Press contacts:
Jason Quan, Director of Marketing
GemStone Systems, Inc.
Phone: 503.533.3212
Email: jasonq at gemstone dot com

GemStone/J and GemStone/S are registered trademarks of GemStone Systems, Inc. Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other trademarks and/or servicemarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

Funny. If I remember correctly, they were acquired by Brokat only a few months ago - which I never thought made much sense.
However, one of the first things Brokat did was lay off part of te staff, and now we see them sell the company again. Brokat must truly be in a bad shape. Good to know GemStone is here to stay.

To buy GemStone was actually a good idea, I think. Brokat
needed a J2EE server. They had been quite successful in the banking sector at least in Germany with their ORB, but
there was a need (and still is) to have something Java based. The problem now is, back at the time they bought
Blaze and Gemstone their stocks were booming at the Neue
Markt. They shelled out about 650$ million if I remember correctly.
And now their in big trouble. To sell Gemstone for a million. Whooa. If I were a bank I'd not go out and chose a company, who's doing so poorly, to refurbish my backend systems.

Wow, acquired for a million! This new company can make all that money back in less than a year just by selling support contracts to existing customers! What a deal! :)

This is definitily good news. Perhaps now the new company can hire back all the fired Gemstoners.

Floyd

That is incredible isn't it? The revenue from the Smalltalk product alone makes this an incredible deal for whoever purchased them.

They have also announced a version 7.0 of the Smalltalk server! I encourage all J2EE users to take a look at the list of features that the current GemStone/S product boasts. I would love to see a J2EE product integrated with so many things and so tightly! I have played with the GemStone/S development environment and I have to admit it is incredible!

Can't wait to get my hands on the Diamond JDO enabled stuff. Excellent idea!

The article about Gemstone acquisition said that they were acquired for $271mil:

...
Brokat, provider of a renowned e-business platform destined for financial sectors, has just announced it intends to purchase GemStone for approximately $271 million.
...

If it was in stock, in todays dollars it's only $5.5mil (BROA - 52wk high/low : 37/0.75), so the decision to sell doesn't sound that bad.

Where in the article does it say $1m, or is that just the whisper number? Geez, I could probably scrounge up that much with a few friends! That's a fire sale if I've ever seen one.

One thing I have to say is how angry I am with Brokat. They purchase one of the better EJB server vendors out there, and then within a year, they literally drive it into the ground -- poor marketing (they marketed their Blaze-spinoff server more), poor targeting, and never even releasing the evaluation version of advanced server on their website, MONTHS after they announced it...

And all through this, GemStone remained the most profitable company. It boggles the mind how insane management can be.

But, if there's one thing that is good out of this, it's the renewed interest in the GemStone/S product. Before Brokat, Gemstone was really downplaying, even hiding, the fact they were once a Smalltalk vendor. This was a mistake. Certainly, the market has moved on, but GS/S shows the Java developer world what GS/J *could* be capable of... and many of the GS/J loyalists were once Smalltalkers. Don't alienate your biggest fan base...

I used to be a vocal GemStone supporter to my clients, but Brokat really destroyed my faith in that product line. This announcement really gives me cause to be optimistic that one day I can use GemStone again...

If you read their FAQ, you will see that the Gemstone/J server won't be continuing, but they are going to continue to update their PCA and call it 'Diamond', which will support JDO (very nice!). They say that they can't compete with BEA and IBM for market share anymore. Damn shame.

Robert McIntosh

Given the current market situation with BEA, IBM, and i-Planet leading the pack with a bit of Borland, ATG, and Oracle floating out there, I think it's probably for the best that they become a JDO product.

In fact, my team was suggesting a move like this back in 1999, since GemStone's core cache API was really just a JNDI Context. It didn't "fit" into the EJB server shoes very well, nor was GS/J ever even close to being compliant to the spec. Plus querying /indexing had to be hand-rolled at the time... the 4.x query & index API's were really just a start.

JDO will force them to "fill in the blanks" & concentrate on making their cache usable by sane individuals that don't want to have to design their own B-Trees, Hash indices, and object queries.. :D