667481 members! Sign up to stay informed.

Sponsored Links


Resources

Enterprise Java
Research Library

Get Java white papers, product information, case studies and webcasts

News News News Messages: 17 Messages: 17 Messages: 17 Printer friendly Printer friendly Printer friendly Post reply Post reply Post reply XML XML XML

IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Richard Bishop on April 02, 2008 DIGG
Rumor is that IONA is being acquired by another company, most likely Software AG. The interesting part is that the investment banking firm working the deal has been shopping IONA's open source group and intellectual property to competitors in the infrastructure/middleware arena.

Software AG wants to double its size within 5 years, pitting itself against Oracle, IBM, and other middleware leaders. The IONA acquisition makes sense in that context. Software AGs business model has no room for an open source entity, as they have made it clear from the last year. Letting go of IONA's open source arm after acquiring them makes sense for them.

[Editor's note: What? Software AG joined Eclipse last year - while open source may not factor in with their overall business model, this statement's a little strong to back up on casual research. Any explanations?]

Does this mean that the open source business model has peaked? Is the tide changing for open source business models to the point where they aren't attractive to larger players? Will angel investors and venture firms take a harder attitude toward financing open source upstarts? What about the people working for IONA's open source? Where will they go? Is this a great time for their competitors to hire IONA's open source talent? Will any of the open source companies buy and continue to grow IONA's open source business?

[Editor's note: two companies with significant open-source operations have confirmed, under condition of anonymity, that they were offered this spin-off by the investment bankers brokering the deal.]

Threaded replies

·  IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Richard Bishop on Wed Apr 02 11:03:14 EDT 2008
  ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Richard Bishop on Wed Apr 02 11:21:03 EDT 2008
    ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Joseph Ottinger on Wed Apr 02 11:27:43 EDT 2008
      ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Neil Ellis on Wed Apr 02 13:07:57 EDT 2008
      ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Michael Meehan on Wed Apr 02 13:17:22 EDT 2008
    ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by bullz97 bullz97 on Wed Apr 02 13:49:14 EDT 2008
  ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by William Louth on Wed Apr 02 15:50:02 EDT 2008
  ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Nikita Ivanov on Wed Apr 02 16:02:45 EDT 2008
    ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Cameron Purdy on Wed Apr 02 20:56:42 EDT 2008
  ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Roland Altenhoven on Thu Apr 03 03:29:51 EDT 2008
    ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Joseph Ottinger on Thu Apr 03 07:47:38 EDT 2008
      ·  Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition? by Roland Altenhoven on Thu Apr 03 08:48:11 EDT 2008
  ·  Any news from James Strachan.. by Time Passx on Thu Apr 03 22:51:44 EDT 2008
    ·  Re: Any news from James Strachan.. by Roland Altenhoven on Fri Apr 04 00:03:31 EDT 2008
      ·  Re: Any news from James Strachan.. by John Davies on Fri Apr 04 14:48:28 EDT 2008
        ·  Re: Any news from James Strachan.. by Roland Altenhoven on Sat Apr 05 00:57:28 EDT 2008
        ·  Re: Any news from James Strachan.. by Time Passx on Sun Apr 06 19:52:30 EDT 2008
      ·  Re: Any news from James Strachan.. by Time Passx on Sun Apr 06 20:05:39 EDT 2008
  Message #249919 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Richard Bishop on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249918
Software AG wants to double its size within 5 years, pitting itself against Oracle, IBM, and other middleware leaders. The IONA acquisition makes sense in that context. Software AGs business model has no room for an open source entity, as they have made it clear from the last year. Letting go of IONA's open source arm after acquiring them makes sense for them.

[Editor's note: What? Software AG joined Eclipse last year - while open source may not factor in with their overall business model, this statement's a little strong to back up on casual research. Any explanations?]

Read the Software AG press releases from the last six months. Look at their products and services catalog. Read your own posting. Contributing to Eclipse, a non-competing product that their programmers probably use in-house, does not make them a business that supports open source projects or that makes them part of their strategy. All indications are that they are as non-open as they come.

Richard Bishop
"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts." -- John Steinbeck

  Message #249920 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Joseph Ottinger on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249919
[Editor's note: What? Software AG joined Eclipse last year - while open source may not factor in with their overall business model, this statement's a little strong to back up on casual research. Any explanations?]
Read the Software AG press releases from the last six months. Look at their products and services catalog. Read your own posting. Contributing to Eclipse, a non-competing product that their programmers probably use in-house, does not make them a business that supports open source projects or that makes them part of their strategy. All indications are that they are as non-open as they come.
You could have said the same thing about IONA not that long ago - same for IBM, same for most software shops opening stuff up lately. Just because they don't have huge open source offerings doesn't mean they're diametrically opposed to open source.

  Message #249928 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Neil Ellis on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249920
Joseph, I have to say this is the sort of article that brings me back to TSS. I tend to skip the 30 odd product placements every week and stick to either interesting technical discussions or fab industry gossip. So I wouldn't be too harsh on Richard! I think any article that starts with the words rumor or gossip can be given a little leeway :-)

Anyway, interesting gossip.

  Message #249929 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Michael Meehan on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249920
You could have said the same thing about IONA not that long ago - same for IBM, same for most software shops opening stuff up lately. Just because they don't have huge open source offerings doesn't mean they're diametrically opposed to open source.


Yep. Plus, reading press releases is just about the worst way in the world of getting inside the mindset of a given company.

If you look at the SOA market, Software AG would probably like to see the enterprise service bus reduced to open source commodity status and then sell management software on top of it. I would think that open source developer functionality that can plug into licensed-based infrastructure management would be right up Software AG's alley.

IBM's heading that way too. Big Blue should be throwing a coming out party for the REST-based Project Zero next week.

  Message #249935 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: bullz97 bullz97 on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249919
I smell an astroturfer. Richard Bishop my foot!

  Message #249942 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: William Louth on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249918

Will any of the open source companies buy and continue to grow IONA's open source business?


Do you know of any deals recently involving the purchase of an open source company by another open source company with actual money other than "if we band together we can hyper.it up more and hopefully get bought out by the guys with the real bucks". Obviously I am excluding RedHat here.

William

  Message #249943 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Nikita Ivanov on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249918
It seems that we are again treating OSS as some sort of religion that has to be excluded from the real-life. Open source is a licensing choice. Period. Everything else is a regular business: you have to market the product, sell services around it and make money. Dynamics of OSS-based businesses are different (they are slower to grow) but the end result should be the same: money earned and growth or shutdown.

In this light I have no idea what IONA’s open source business is all about. IONA has a dozen of developers committing to some OSS project like Fuse, ServiceMix and ActiveMQ (James Strachan’s influence is obvious). They probably sell some small measure of services around these projects. And?

I’m certain that most of the revenue comes from Artix and good old Orbix and OSS story was just a bandwagon they wanted to jump in when it was fashionable. It’s hard to sell something that you don’t have…

My $0.02,
Nikita Ivanov.
GridGain - Grid Computing Made Simple

  Message #249963 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Cameron Purdy on April 02, 2008 in response to Message #249943
Nikita -

In this light I have no idea what IONA’s open source business is all about. IONA has a dozen of developers committing to some OSS project like Fuse, ServiceMix and ActiveMQ [..] I’m certain that most of the revenue comes from Artix and good old Orbix and OSS story was just a bandwagon they wanted to jump in when it was fashionable.


I think if you look closely you will find that Artix (for example) uses some of those projects under the hood, so there is likely a reason to it ..

At any rate, best wishes to those involved.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Oracle Coherence: Data Grid for Java, C++ and .NET

  Message #249972 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Roland Altenhoven on April 03, 2008 in response to Message #249918
Rumor is that IONA is being acquired by another company, most likely Software AG. The interesting part is that the investment banking firm working the deal has been shopping IONA's open source group and intellectual property to competitors in the infrastructure/middleware arena.



So far as I know, has "Software AG" never confirmed any of this rumores. The question is: What is real on this story ?

I hope that IONA can continous as it is.

Roland
SOA Competence Network

  Message #249983 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Joseph Ottinger on April 03, 2008 in response to Message #249972
Rumor is that IONA is being acquired by another company, most likely Software AG. The interesting part is that the investment banking firm working the deal has been shopping IONA's open source group and intellectual property to competitors in the infrastructure/middleware arena.
So far as I know, has "Software AG" never confirmed any of this rumores. The question is: What is real on this story ?

I hope that IONA can continous as it is.
It's hard to say - rumor is rumor. Chances are that if you ask Iona or Software AG, they'd deny fiercely - as required by US law - and would continue to deny any acquisition until after deal was actually executed. There's no real point in even asking them, honestly - this rumor seems to have legs, but it's *only* a rumor.

  Message #249990 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: IONA Open Source: Disbanded After Acquisition?

Posted by: Roland Altenhoven on April 03, 2008 in response to Message #249983
It's hard to say - rumor is rumor. Chances are that if you ask Iona or Software AG, they'd deny fiercely - as required by US law - and would continue to deny any acquisition until after deal was actually executed. There's no real point in even asking them, honestly - this rumor seems to have legs, but it's *only* a rumor.


Dead silence since many weeks - that can't be a good sign.

Maybe some of the guys would say some associated words here - but we must understand, that this is absolutely impossible according to their positions and at this point.

Roland

  Message #250039 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Any news from James Strachan..

Posted by: Time Passx on April 03, 2008 in response to Message #249918
?

  Message #250040 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: Any news from James Strachan..

Posted by: Roland Altenhoven on April 04, 2008 in response to Message #250039
?

Poorly content for a reply on a worthwhile thread.

But a look to some interested pages, shows very well some "news" from James Strachan: He is working very hard - as usual - in a lot of Apache Open Source Projects and some of his other activities.

Maybe "Time Passx" or "?" or ... will also participate and help in some of this Projects ?

  Message #250060 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: Any news from James Strachan..

Posted by: John Davies on April 04, 2008 in response to Message #250040
You're not going to see a whole lot of replies on here IONA people, I'm going to get in trouble for this but I can take it.

The question of acquisition is pure speculation and no one is going to comment on that, the facts were made available as IONA press releases in Jan and there is nothing anyone else knows beyond that.

The question of future of open source is a great discussion topic but given the title of this thread it's not going to see any input from IONA.

Jo, if you want to spin off a new thread I think you'll find some enthusiastic input but this thread will hit legal barriers for many of those involved.

-John-

  Message #250069 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: Any news from James Strachan..

Posted by: Roland Altenhoven on April 05, 2008 in response to Message #250060
You're not going to see a whole lot of replies on here IONA people, I'm going to get in trouble for this but I can take it.

The question of acquisition is pure speculation and no one is going to comment on that, the facts were made available as IONA press releases in Jan and there is nothing anyone else knows beyond that.

The question of future of open source is a great discussion topic but given the title of this thread it's not going to see any input from IONA.

Jo, if you want to spin off a new thread I think you'll find some enthusiastic input but this thread will hit legal barriers for many of those involved.

-John-


Sometimes are good informations and good discussions not so bad - when they are based exclusively on real facts and excludes completely personally and delicate content.

But - nobody can expect this in a public forum with the participation of people with very distinct mentalities, attitudes and purposes.

Previously, I had already described my opinion over this speculations and understand very good the position and situation of the associated people.

I think the discussion should continue at this day, when the facts are real and clearly putting on the table.

Roland

  Message #250092 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: Any news from James Strachan..

Posted by: Time Passx on April 06, 2008 in response to Message #250060
I wish James good luck. I have been using many of his works for quite sometime.

I am happy as long as a merger/ takeover from IONA etc does not affect the open source stacks.

  Message #250093 Post reply Post reply Post reply Go to top Go to top Go to top

Re: Any news from James Strachan..

Posted by: Time Passx on April 06, 2008 in response to Message #250040
>>will also participate and help in some of this Projects?

I updated a few documentation/ wiki pages in http://servicemix.apache.org while ago :)

New content on TheServerSide.comNew content on TheServerSide.comNew content on TheServerSide.com

Dependency Injection in Java EE 6 - Part 1

Reza Rahman explores the features of the proposed JSR 299, Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE (CDI). When approved, it promises to be a key feature of Java EE 6. (November 2, Article)

SAML: It's Not just for Web services

SAML is an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. The single most important problem that SAML was created to solve is the Web browser Single Sign-On problem. Many organizations are debating whether to stay with version 1.1 or move to 2.0. This article makes observations about both options. (September 28, Article)

Programming is Also Teaching Your Team

Joe Ottinger takes a look at how people learn, and applies it to the practice of programming. He notes that understanding how people learn is an essential part of working in a programming team. (September 22, Article)

Can Java EE Deliver The Asynchronous Web?

Stephen Maryka gave us an article about the Asynchronous Web and posed a number of questions that get examined like an approach to delivering Asynchronous Web capabilities through extensions to existing Java EE technologies. (July 14, Article)

JSF Flex

JavaServer Faces Flex goal is to provide users capability in creating standard Flex components, part of flexSDK which is open sourced through MPL license, as normal JSF components. This article by Ji Hoon Kim will provide an overview of creating a simple multilingual JSF page consisting of JSF Flex tags. (June 29, Article)

The Rules of SOA - A Road to a Successful SOA Implementation

In this session Jeff explores the key characteristics of successful SOA projects. He covers some of the patterns, and anti-patterns, tool sets, and strategies that he himself learned the hard way. Last, he provides a strategy and blueprint for achieving a high likelihood of success in your SOA project. (June 23, Tech Talk)

Ari Zilka Talks About Terracotta 3.1

Ari Zilka, CTO of Terracotta, Inc., talks about the new features in Terracotta 3.1, announced during JavaOne and available now. (June 15, Tech Talk)

Enterprise Application Integration, and Spring

In this Tech Talk, Josh Long explores an integration challenge using Spring Integration and walks through the implementation, employing and expanding on the basic patterns of Enterprise Application Integration to tie together components into a function integration solution, and then demonstrates how Spring Integration helps address the integration requirements. (June 15, Tech Talk)

Google Web Toolkit: An Introduction

In this Tech Talk, David Geary teaches you: The basics of Google Web Toolkit; How to implement Ajax-enabled applications in Java; Internationalization; Hooking into the browser history mechanism; Remote procedure calls. (June 4, Tech Talk)

Just Enough Early Architecture to Guide Development

Jon Kern discusses the best architecture/technical solutions and ensure that they are repeated by all developers. By tackling the architecture up-front in a serial manner, subsequent parallel development will be much more manageable and predictable. (May 28, Tech Talk)

Productive Programmer: On the Lam from the Furniture Police

This keynote describes the frustrations of modern knowledge workers in their quest to actually get some work done, and solutions for how to guard yourself against all those distractions. Neal Ford talks about environments, coding, acceleration, automation, and avoiding repetition as ways to defeat the misguided attempts to sap your ability to produce good work. (May 26, Tech Talk)

Auto-Scaling Your Existing Web Application

Gil demonstrates how new, aggressive uses of already abundant compute capacity by common applications offer competitive value for application designers. (May 21, Tech Talk)

Automating Hibernate Mapping and Queries For Java Web Development

Chris Keene introduces WaveMaker as a new way to automate the ability to generate Hibernate classes in order to more quickly bring OR mapping into an application. (May 19, Article)

Auto-Scaling Your Existing Web Application

In this session Nati Shalom demonstrates how to take a standard Java EE web application and scale it out or down dynamically without changes to the application code. Seeing as most web applications are over-provisioned to meet infrequent peak loads, this is a dramatic change because it enables growing your application as needed, when needed, without paying for unutilized resources. (May 19, Tech Talk)

Free Book PDF Download: Mastering EJB Third Edition

Mastering EJB was one of the original and most influential EJB books in the industry. Mastering EJB III now returns with two new expert co-authors, updated for EJB 2.1 and 30% new chapters including security, integration, best practices, open source, and more.
(Book PDF Download)

Application Server Matrix

The Application Server Matrix is a detailed listing of J2EE vendors and their application server products, with information on latest version numbers, J2EE spec support and licensing, pricing, platform support, and links to product downloads and reviews.
(Application Server Comparison Matrix)

News | Blogs | Discussions | Tech talks | Patterns | Reviews | White Papers | Downloads | Articles | Media kit | About
Java Solutions
All Content Copyright ©2007 TheServerSide Privacy Policy
Site Map