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Sun, Microsoft Work on Java-.NET Interoperability

The love fest between rivals Sun Microsystems and Microsoft continued last week as the two companies announced they would provide substantially improved interoperability between the Java and .NET programming environments.

In April 2004, Microsoft and Sun buried the hatchet in their bitter war, which saw Sun attack Microsoft on antitrust grounds in the courts and Microsoft create a Redmond dialect of Java called .NET with which it could attack Java. By stopping the Java-.NET wars, Sun was able to get close to $2 billion, which it desperately needed, and Microsoft was able to get some interoperability agreements, which both of these companies customers (and, indeed, all Java and .NET customers) needed very badly.

According to Joe Keller, vice president of marketing for integration platforms at Sun, last week's Java-.NET interoperability announcement is the third phase in the commitment that the two companies made to not just stop fighting, but to start cooperating. In May, Sun and Microsoft delivered single sign-on capabilities for Windows and Solaris platforms, and then a few months later they committed to support the WS* specification relating to systems management, which is called the WS-Management spec. With this support, Windows servers can access systems management data and features in Solaris operating systems, and Solaris can access similar features in Windows. This allows Solaris administrators working with Sun's N1 systems management tools to seek out, monitor, and control Windows servers and Windows administrators working in the Microsoft Management Console to reach into Solaris servers and do the same. Neither of these announcements earlier this year have had much of an effect on iSeries shops, but the third one will.

The WS* specifications include some 13 different specifications on how to create a Web service. Sun has committed to implement more WS* specifications, including those relating to SOAP-based messaging, metadata, security, and quality of service in the Java platform, and Microsoft has committed to do the same in the .NET platform. Microsoft will be implementing these specs in the Windows Communication Foundation, formerly known as the "Indigo" project, while Sun will be implementing those specs first in project "Glassfish," the open source version of its Java Enterprise System application server. WCF is one of the nifty features coming out in the future "Longhorn" Vista Server. The commercial implementation of Sun's J2EE application server with this interoperability embedded in it is expected at the JavaOne show in May 2006. Sun is also putting the support into its Java Web Services Developer Pack development tools. Sun will be up in Redmond testing the interoperability this week, in fact, using early editions of this code. IBM, as a strong Java and Web services proponent, is expected to eventually equip its tools and application servers with similar features, which is probably where it gets interesting for iSeries shops.

Kellner says that while the WS-I spec and the SOAP protocol allowed Java and .NET to talk to each other, this interoperability is more robust. Now, you can be sure that services built in .NET or Java can talk to each other securely, predictably, and reliably. "This allows you to build truly enterprise-class service-oriented applications," explains Keller. "And as funny as this might sound, you don't have to care if the services are built in Java or .NET. They are just exposed as services on a network, and programmers just don't have to care."

ERP Vendor Infor Global Says Business Is Brisk

Midrange ERP software maker Infor Global Solutions has become a powerhouse through some large acquisitions, and some of them even public companies like MAPICS, but now Infor is a private company. That means its financial visibility is a matter of taste, not law. But, because Infor knows that current and potential customers worry about the economic well-being of software makers, Infor recently shared some data on how its business is doing.

Infor said that in the first quarter of fiscal 2006 ended October 31, it added 211 new customers, an increase of 26 percent over the 167 customers it added in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2005. These new customers represented 39 percent of total license revenues. In the prior sequential quarter, license sales from new customers represented 29 percent of total license revenues. Infor added that over 1,500 existing customers bought new software or enhanced their existing solutions in the first fiscal quarter, and that channel partner sales represented 58 percent of total license sales in the quarter just ended. Infor has close to 18,000 customers worldwide, which means that about 8 percent of its customers bought in the quarter and it increased its customer base by close to 2 percent in the quarter. Those are pretty good numbers.

Lakeview Technology Creates Disaster Recovery Resource Center

High availability software maker Lakeview Technology last week announced an online Disaster Recovery Resource Center aimed at educating small- and medium-sized businesses about the issues surrounding high availability and disaster recovery--and aimed at helping it to promote its solutions as well.

While disaster recovery and high availability are often still viewed as being something that only the largest companies need, in an increasingly online world, having your computer systems fail is an economic disaster for most businesses. "No matter how large or small a business is, each faces ongoing risks and financial consequences from the effects of any planned or unplanned downtime," explained Bill Hammond, Lakeview's product strategy director for its MIMIX dr1 product, in announcing the online center. "These risks and challenges grow more dangerous and expensive with each additional critical application, network enhancement or system upgrade."

The online center is aimed at C-level executives who may be unfamiliar with the issues, but who are trying to learn about disaster recovery, as well as at IT professionals looking for resources to help make their case for HA and DR products to upper management, who often expect uptime but do not understand why there is downtime. The site includes three workbooks for educating businesses about the issues: All about Business Continuity and DR, How to Assess the Financial Impact of Downtime, and Determining Business Resiliency--It's All About Recovery Time. These may not be light reading, but they might be good tools if you find yourself among the estimated 65 percent of SMB customers who do not have a disaster recovery plan.

DataMirror Launches Discounts, Pulls Its Stock Off NASDAQ

The market for high availability and data transformation software in the iSeries market is white-hot with competition right now, and DataMirror last week cranked up the heat a little higher by offering a 20 percent discount on software acquired for iSeries servers before December 31. The discounts are applied to any iSeries-based DataMirror products, and can be used with a similar promotion from IBM, which is offering a $30,000 rebate on an i5 520 HA Edition before year's end. And by taking part in the discount promotion, you can enroll in a contest where the prize is a romantic getaway in Las Vegas. This DataMirror promotion is all part of the company's "Experience the Love All Over Again" marketing campaign, which was launched after COMMON and highlights the fact that companies all over the world love their OS/400 servers.

In a separate announcement, DataMirror has asked the NASDAQ exchange to voluntarily delist the company's stock from that exchange. Quite a number of companies around the world are doing the same thing. After listing their shares on multiple exchanges during the boom-boom times of the late 1990s, trading volumes have fallen off, particularly for many high-tech stocks. Peter Cauley, DataMirror's chief financial officer, says that DataMirror's trading volume on the NASDAQ is so low that it is not cost-effective to keep it listed in New York and that the Toronto Stock Exchange, which is where the company was originally listed, will provide the means to buy and sell DataMirror shares. DataMirror has 8.55 million shares outstanding and a market capitalization of $62.9 million as we go to press.

Manta Technologies Delivers New iSeries Access Courses

iSeries training and education firm Manta Technologies has announced a new series of courses to teach people how to use iSeries Access for Windows, the PC connectivity product for the iSeries. The course covers how to install the software and then gets into the ins-and-outs of 5250 terminal emulation, data transfer, and directory updates. A single-user, annual license for the course through the MantaNow online service costs $494, while a single-user CD license costs $796. You can also buy it in conjunction with Manta's iSeries Navigator series, which is a broader package that costs $810 for a MantaNow license or $1,3000 for CD license (also for a single user). IT Jungle is a distributor of Manta products, so if you are interested, give us a call at 212-942-5818.

UK PeopleSoft, JDE Users Give Oracle Decent Grades

The UK Oracle User Group, which is obviously a group of customers of Oracle located in the United Kingdom, held its meeting in the industrial town of Birmingham, England, last week. And one of the key things that came out of the event were the results of a survey of Oracle customers, including those of the former PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, who joined the Oracle customer ranks after Oracle's hostile takeover of PeopleSoft in January.

Surveys in the United States of PeopleSoft and JDE shops taken earlier this year showed that these customers were none too pleased with the whole Oracle affair, but if the UK users are any indication of how customers feel, then all of the noise seems to have settled down quite a bit. Some 49 percent of JDE shops and 51 percent of PeopleSoft shops polled in the UK for the survey said that they believed that the merger was handled "quite well," according to the UK-OUG survey. Some 9 percent of JDE shops thought the merger was handled "very well," and 16 percent said it was handled badly. The same breakdown was not given for PeopleSoft shops in the release that came out last week, but 63 percent of all Oracle shops (including PeopleSoft and JDE shops now) say that they are happy with Oracle's service levels, compared to 64 percent this time last year. From Oracle's point of view, adding these two ERP vendors' customer bases has not changed satisfaction levels. UK-OUG's survey indicated that 52 percent of PeopleSoft users and 44 percent of JDE users believe that support levels have not changed since the deal went through. About 62 percent of PeopleSoft shops said they were aware of Oracle's "Project Fusion" converged ERP platform plans, but only 54 percent of PeopleSoft shops said they were happy with the plan. Oracle also has software licensing issues, with 80 percent of its customers saying they were unhappy with the cost and complexity of Oracle software licenses.

Yikes!

On the database front, 17 percent of the Oracle users surveyed said they use Oracle 10g, with 49 percent saying they are still using Oracle 9i. The number of companies using pre-Oracle 9i databases has dropped from 44 percent last year to 20 percent this year.