Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters

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  1. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters (24 messages)

    Toplink is not the only thing for sale from development tools maker WebGain Inc. Apparently, a liquidation auction was held at their corporate headquarters in California on June 13th, for items ranging from over 140 Herman Miller office chairs to refridgerators to travel mugs and over 120 workstations/servers. If anyone needs an Aeron, there might be some leftover from the auction.

    This obviously represents a huge chunk of Webgain. When I tried to call their corporate headquarters today to find out more (at 2pm local time), I was told that no one was 'in' at the office.

    At this time, it is unclear which units within WebGain (if not the whole company) are directly affected by these obvious layoffs.

    Get some office accessories at the WebGain Auction.
    Reply to this

    Threaded Messages (24)

  2. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    And in the 'Novelties' section there are Lots of Travel Mugs which say 'Turning E-Concepts into E-Business in Web Time'. Those were the days ;-(

    Anyway, the whole thing was flamed and discussed here:http://comments.fuckedcompany.com/phpcomments/index.php?newsid=87580&page=1&parentid=0&crapfilter=1

    --
    Dimitri
    Reply to this Reply to original

  3. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    CNET is reporting tonight that Oracle has announced that it has purchased TopLink, and will give it away free on OTN.

    See http://news.com.com/2100-1001-936185.html?tag=fd_top for the details.

    Alan
    Reply to this Reply to original

  4. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    wow. toplink for free!
    Reply to this Reply to original

  5. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    This can't be right.... why should Oracle do anything this daft? That's a very valuable bit of IP they have there.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  6. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Oracle "gives away" everything for free on OTN for development, evaluation, and testing purposes. But, the question is, what will you have to pay when you deploy the application?

    Also, Oracle is really not selling so many individual tools anymore. Instead, they are bundling their tools together into expensive mega-toolsets, much to the disdain of their customers. So, I would expect that Toplink would be integrated into either JDeveloper or Oracle9iAS.

    - Brian

    Reply to this Reply to original

  7. RE: Oracle Pricing[ Go to top ]

    Brian,

    Oracle Used to bundle all the development tools but now
    Oracle Offers its Java development tool (Oracle9i JDeveloper) unbundeled at $995, which is a great price for an IDE with UML, J2EE, Profiling, Tuning and SCM.
    Check it out at:
    http://otn.oracle.com/products/jdev/content.html

    As always with OTN download the full version is available for free download with no time limits for evaluation, but you need to pay when you decide to develop production applications with it. I guess this would be the same for toplink.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  8. RE: Oracle Pricing[ Go to top ]

    Oracle Used to bundle all the development tools but now

    > Oracle Offers its Java development tool (Oracle9i
    > JDeveloper) unbundeled at $995

    Yes, but JDeveloper is the only thing that is unbundled. If you need Designer/Forms/Reports/SCM/etc then you have to but them all together. The same with the application server: the "pure J2EE" stuff is "cheap" but if you need anything else then you have to pay a ton.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  9. Pramati's Competitive Upgrade[ Go to top ]

    As Webgain goes under, Pramati has announced a Competitive Upgrade License at $299 for their J2EE IDE Pramati Studio!

    http://www.pramati.com/purchase/offer_4.htm

    I have tried Pramati Studio and it is pretty good for EJB development. Has all the J2EE 1.3 stuff.

    And at $299, it might be a good idea for Webgain users to go for it.

    Chuck

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  10. Pramati's Competitive Upgrade[ Go to top ]

    Did anyone else notice the irony in this:

    Chuck: "As Webgain goes under, Pramati has announced a Competitive Upgrade License at $299 for their J2EE IDE Pramati Studio!"

    Now I don't know who "Chuck DeFatte" is, but I do know that everytime a company goes under, Oracle finds some reason to publish a "special offer" to scare people into buying Oracle. So now that Oracle is the one buying technology/software from a failing company, Pramati is publishing a "special offer".

    Someone there has a real sense of humor. ;-)

    Peace,

    Cameron Purdy
    Tangosol, Inc.
    Tangosol Coherence: Clustered Coherent Caching for Java and J2EE
    Reply to this Reply to original

  11. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Floyd:

    What has this got to with J2EE? If I want news of this kind, I can go to f**kedcompany.com?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  12. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Hihi

    Did you miss that WebGain have a tool to use when building systems according to the J2EE standard ???

    I think it is great that Floyd and others pick those things from the net and make it awalable here, I don't have time to surf the web that much - have to work - but I take a peek here every day

    Jan
    Reply to this Reply to original

  13. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    What has this got to with J2EE?


    Since TSS isA J2EE community - things like this ARE a part of J2EE community life these days, like it or not. Without news like this, looking at the stream of press releases and ECPerf results (with usual IBM bashing) might give you a wrong picture.

    Not to mention the possible impact of this on Toplink customers, people who were considering Toplink, Cocobase, people who were considering Cocobase etc.

    --
    Dimitri
    Reply to this Reply to original

  14. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    "Since TSS isA J2EE community - things like this ARE a part of J2EE community life these days, like it or not. Without news like this, looking at the stream of press releases and ECPerf results (with usual IBM bashing) might give you a wrong picture. "

    Thanks Dimitri, my feelings as well. Part of my mission is to put the good and the bad of the J2EE industry up on this site for all of you guys, to help you stay informed on whats going on in this field.

    Floyd
    Reply to this Reply to original

  15. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Wow, Silverstream is gone....

    It's funny -- cynics take great pleasure in telling us why this J2EE server is better than that one and vice versa... but when a J2EE company goes down, everybody is negatively affected because that is saying something about the industry.
    The insults that are flung around on this message board are on the same line as sibling rivalry: you can say bad things about your sister, but if anybody else does they get a bloody nose.
    Having said that, how many J2EE servers are left?

    Basil.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  16. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Basil,

    I don't think this speaks to anything about the "industry" as a whole. It only says something about the company. Was toplink profitable? probably not. But it might even have been profitable and the company would still have to declare bankrupty. This happens when you have receivables you can't get, long term revenues that are due in the future, but payables now...that sort of thing (You've got the revenues, but not the cash to pay your bills right now). There are a million other reasons why this company might have failed, and I thinks it's unlikely that _any_ of them have anything to do with the industry.

    And again, this really only speaks to the management of one company, not the whole industry.

    And is Webgain really bankrupt? Or are they just selling an unprofitable unit? Or are the shedding units that don't have anything to do with their real business lines. These things happen all the time.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  17. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    And is Webgain really bankrupt? Or are they just

    >> selling an unprofitable unit?

    I tried to get license keys for TopLink via the automated web interface and got no results. Called the 1800# for webgain sales this past Friday, number disconnected. Called the main switchboard listed on the website, number disconnected. emailed, and eventually heard back from the TopLink product manager... but he couldn't say anything about what was going on with Oracle.

    What great timing for me to look at TopLink again (was a customer at a previous company back in 2000 and pretty satisfied...)
    Reply to this Reply to original

  18. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Great timing to check out JDX O/R mapping technology. JDX is powerful, flexible and intuitive. This lightweight persistence engine wont cost you an arm and a leg. Get a free download from Software Tree where customers come first!

    Damodar Periwal
    Software Tree, Inc.
    Simplify Data Integration
    Reply to this Reply to original

  19. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Jason McKerr wrote:

    "But it might even have been profitable and the company would still have to declare bankrupty."

    The great management Peter Drucker once wrote that small growth companies ought not to think in terms of profit but in 'cash flow' terms. A swiftly-growing company can be put out of business by a disparity between it's current accounts recievable (90 days past) and accounts payable (90 days forward). If the company is growing at 100% a year that can be an enormous difference.

    This is one reason why people look at variables like 'cash burn' in assessing whether to invest.

    BTW, this isn't only a small-company problem. When Chrysler got government loan guarantees in the late 70's it was because of cash-burn. They were losing money but had a new generation of products in the pipeline which were very likely to make it profitable. But they were going to have to keep investing, and there wasn't enough cash in the company to make it through to the new models.....

    Webgain probably wasn't profitable, but it might have been. If so it was the investment program it needed to stay in business which put it under.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  20. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    <quote>
    ... but when a J2EE company goes down, everybody is negatively affected because that is saying something about the industry.
    </quote>

    Consolidation is not specific to J2EE or any particular industry and its effect is not necessarily negative. There's so called the Rule of Three: "Any given market can support only three major players." Silverstream had some interesting ideas but it was never a major player. I'd say it's regretful (like some other things in life) but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's negative or that it reflects badly on the industry.

    --
    Igor

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  21. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    Basil writes: "Having said that, how many J2EE servers are left?"

    A bunch. Weblogic, Websphere, HPAS, Sybase EAServer, Oracle, JBoss, Sun One IPlanet, Borland's product, JRun, Pramati, and JoNAS for starters.

    The problem is that every big software company (except Microsoft) seemed to believe that they needed an entry in this space, leading to overcrowding and underinvestment for most of the also-rans. The increasing capability of JBoss is very bad news for the commercial vendors but particularly bad for the also-rans.

    I figure that Weblogic, Websphere, and JBoss are probable survivors, with IPlanet and Oracle's offering (the Orion one or HPAS) surviving as throw-ins. Sun is already bundling IPlanet with their hardware and I figure Oracle will do the same with whichever App Server they decide to offer.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  22. Large Liquidation Auction at WebGain Headquarters[ Go to top ]

    "What has this got to with J2EE? If I want news of this kind, I can go to f**kedcompany.com?"

    If I want posts of this kind, I can go to Slashdot.

    Reply to this Reply to original

  23. A pity[ Go to top ]

    By my count there were a total of 75 client computers and laptops on sale. Depending on how you count them, that is either 60 or 75 people layed off (15 laptops might be dual-use, like my current setup where I have both a laptop and desktop computer). The Aeron chairs seemed to indicate those kinds of numbers as well.

    It's amazing how little is left of a lot of people's dreams. I hope that some of these bankruptcies are a sign that the recession may be coming to en end. Something like this happens toward the end of each recession as some relatively well-managed companies finally come to the end of their resources.

    Best of luck to all the dumped employees and even to the execs. They are in my prayers.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  24. A pity[ Go to top ]

    On the other hand, any company that spends that much money on a chair probably shouldn't exist, anyway. One of WebGain's biggest problems was its stupidly high prices.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  25. A pity[ Go to top ]

    Ignatius Reilly wrote: "On the other hand, any company that spends that much money on a chair probably shouldn't exist, anyway. One of WebGain's biggest problems was its stupidly high prices."

    Good point. The old rule of thumb in Silicon Valley was that any startup who had not had a big hit and turned a profit ought to be in sixth-class office space, and any company which broke that rule didn't deserve capital. One of the things which warned me that things had become badly unhinged during the dot.bomb era was the conviction that rules like that no longer applied.

    My firm has Aeron's in the conference room but us peons get to sit on cheaper chairs.
    Reply to this Reply to original