Express Logic cried foul in June 2006 when Green Hills Software appeared to have a competitor in its embedded microkernel RTOS micro-velOSity product that looked a little too much like what Express Logic had already been delivering to the market (and partnering with Green Hills on).
In seeking a remedy, Express Logic called for an injunction on the market delivery of Green Hills' micro-velOSity (which was denied), and also sought arbitration over its position that Green Hills copied the ThreadX API C source code contained in Express Logic’s tx_api.h header file. Express Logic said that Green Hills had tread on its copyrights when Green Hills created micro-velOSity as an alternative to Express Logic's ThreadX.
Well, now the arbitration panel has sided largely against Express Logic. Green Hills feels vindicated. Express Logic would like to differ, if not in the case's outcome, than in the hardships facing the industry.
“We’re shocked that copying of source code and using it to compete with our copyrighted work was not found to be infringement,” said William E. Lamie, author of ThreadX and president of Express Logic, in a release. “We believe that the basis upon which the arbitrators determined that this copying was not infringing would put all software code at risk of being copied without infringement. After all, what software is not made up of ‘words and short phrases?’ As for the ‘functional requirements for compatibility,’ why should anyone be able to copy source code under the guise of compatibility but not use it for that purpose? This ruling seems illogical to us, and would put all software at risk if this reasoning were to be applied in other cases.”
From Green Hills: "We are vindicated by this judgment,” said Dan O’Dowd, CEO of Green Hills Software, in a release. “Express Logic’s campaign to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt about micro-velOSity has failed. We regret any inconvenience this litigation has
caused our customers. This final arbitration award ensures that embedded developers can continue to use micro-velOSity with confidence.”
The issues around APIs and compatibility and when source code can and can not be copied are still a fuzz ball. The panel that ruled on this case does not set legal precedent, and a similar lawsuit may be filed (although not in this instance) some day.
Indeed, spats between software companies are nothing new, but the concepts around copyright and code (and even patents!) remain treacherous for many companies. You stay in this business for more than a few months and you'll hear of weird lawsuits and claims around patents, copyrights, and licenses. It's a vipers pit out there, for many.
Unfortunately, that may not change much any time soon. Even largely sensible revisions to the patents process that could clarify the role patents play in software are bogged down in bureaucracy and, yes, Virginia ... politics.
Express Logic may not be able to do more than complain in sales meetings that Green Hills has violated its intellectual property. Express Logic also claimed that Green Hills engages in unfair business practices ... well, that too is now more for the court of public opinion to decide. "Unfair" is a tough term to qualify in the world of software. Has anyone claimed that Silicon Valley or Route 128 are the bastions of the fairness and truth? Not since Rogers Rangers tangled with the Abenakis.
Did Express Logic bend, like a pretzel, the concept of APIs in seeking a legal remedy for its alleged victimization? Perhaps. Are the distinctions in code sharing for compatibility testing and for intellectual property protection murky? Probably. Does Green Hills care about its partners much when its own interests are involved? Probably not.
So there are some lessons in here. APIs are not a good way to assert intellectual property claims. Another is be careful who you partner with when murky software definitions are involved.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Lotus Notes 8 brings unified collaboration to mashupable clients
IBM made two announcements Friday that should help smooth the way for bringing unifed Web 2.0-style applications to the Notes/Domino-installed enterprise
The new Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8 releases merge collaboration, communication and productivity features into a single desktop environment, giving users integrated access to such things as RSS feeds and search, along with email, instant messaging, presence, word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software.
At the same time, IBM announced Expeditor 6.1.1, an Eclipse-based mashups tool that forms the underpinings of Notes/Domino 8 and thereby allows mashups via managed clients to reach desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.
Regular readers of BriefingsDirect know that search is an emerging enterprise strategy of growing importance and that RSS feeds will provide a powerful tool for distributing and managing content and data. Combining them onto a single desktop with other Web 2.0 technologies and productivity applications is certainly a step in the best-of-all-worlds direction.
Incidentally, the means of bringing mashups to the enterprise is evolving along varying lines. IBM likes managed clients, no surprise there. But Serena Software will soon be providing an on-demand platform for mashups that's also intended for enterprise use.
It's no secret that the Lotus Notes UI has been, shall we say ... cumbersome over the years (since Notes 5?). IBM hopes to have cleared that hurdle with a new interface, featuring a sidebar that summarizes all the user's tools in one place, including the RSS feeds.
In fact, it's the new interface that's gotten the most positive feedback from customer tests, according to Ed Brill, Business Unit Executive, Worldwide Lotus Notes/Domino Sales, IBM Software Group (nice title, Ed; go for brevity, I always say). The new release has been in development for more than two years.
The addition of productivity tools, according to Brill, comes from the observation that the principal reason many users in the past have left the Notes application was to use a spreadsheet or word processing (Since, like ... 1989). With the new release, users will be able to do that without leaving Notes.
Imagine, just imagine, if SmartSuite had been natively integrated into Notes in, say, 1994. Things might have panned out a little differently. Oh, well.Built on Eclipse, Lotus Expeditor 6.1.1, is designed to allow integrated mashups independent of the client technology. Among the key features of Expeditor are:
- A server-managed composite platform to integrate and aggregate applications and information.
- Integration with real-time collaboration.
- Integration with IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory and IBM WebSphere Portal Express.
- End-to-end government-grade mobile security.
- The ability to transform Microsoft Visual Basic applications.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Serena fills cracks between SOA, ALM and SaaS with process-centric mashup-as-a-service platform
ALM vendor Serena Software is taking a walk on the wild services side in September when it announces the beta release of a platform for mashing up business process applications.
Unlike on-demand tools for content- and data-centric mashups, Serena with "Project Vail" has its sights on the visual tools-driven business-centric process and logic functions that IT departments just can't ever get to. We're talking HR, CRM, and supply chain applications -- the nuts and bolts of large enterprise logical functions. Because who said mashups were just for kids?
The notion is that business users have needs for small and often one-off web applications or widgets that support a small or modest process. They could go to their IT departments and ask for it, and they probably will be told "no," or that it will take months, and at staggering cost. IT is putting out fires, not adding small incremental efficiencies to department-level business stuff, right?
But like the long tail for media, there's a long tail for applications functionality, too. The trick is how to allow non-developers to mashup business services and processes, but also make such activities ultimately okay with IT. Can there be a rogue services development and deployment ecology inside enterprises that IT can live with? How can we ignite "innovation without permission" but not burn the house down?
Serena believes they can define and maintain such balances, and offer business process mashups via purely visual tools either on-premises or in the cloud. Serena, when it unveils Project Vail on Sept. 10, expects to produce a compelling and free mashup tool that MS Office power uses can quickly relate to. An Excel developer should actually produce business-centric mashups (no pivot tables required), so they say.
By making the tool free and virally distributed, Serena expects to seed the need for the on-premies servers they will license, or to become in-cloud host to the mashups. Serena will provide an all-online platform-as-a-service approach that they will charge for on a subscription basis, probably on a per-user/per month basis and perhaps also on a mashup by mashup basis. Imagine app dev from your HR department's petty cash account!
Now we're already seeing a lot of data mashups. And we've seen development as a service. But the notion business processes as a service has some interesting implications. And with a configuration management and ALM company -- which knows enterprise IT, as well as development efficiencies and applications/services lifecycles (not to mention how to leverage open source) -- well ... Serena might just be able to pull this off as well as anyone.
They will need to bridge the challenging uncharted waters between users, developers, IT as well as among and between SaaS, SOA, and packaged business applications. No easy task. But new Serena CEO Jeremy Burton has always struck me as a thought leader, never one to let his environment limit his gait.
If Serena can carve out leadership on this, there's a huge opportunity. IT departments -- as long as they are not held responsible for that over which they have little authority -- might actually like the notion of avoiding small custom applications chores. Having more on-demand or SaaS services might also grease the skids toward more use (and reuse) of SOA virtues. Allowing creative flexibility for line-of-business personnel to experiment with new approaches without involving developers could bear powerful fruit.
For example, if the mashups are solid and productive, well just use them as blueprints and requirements for more "sanctioned" and official application projects. These mashups could actually become incubators and laboratories for the rest of the developers to pick and choose from. Cool.
It will take a progressive CIO to see the value in this. This will have to be done with low risk to the enterprise. But being able to associate IT ALM with on-demand ALM will go a long way to making the Wild West of mashups seem more like the Midwest of IT creativity. Can be done.
Serena is leveraging its TeamTrack products to build out its new mashup tools, platform, and workflows. The way to create mashups for dummies (sorry) is to exploit workflow and process tools. Serena is working with OpSource for the hosting and multi-tenancy infrastructure.
If all of this works, the Serena platform could also evolve into a business mashup exchange, a solutions ecology for marketing services that could play very well with SOAs across small businesses and up to the largest enterprises and governments. There may even be federation between such an exchange and SOA registries and repositories. Shop till you drop.
The notion of business mashups as a service could become a sleeping tiger. Microsoft should like this a lot, even if they are only experimenting with consumery stuff now like Popfly. I actually think this also aligns with IBM's SOA strategy of vertically focused services and reuse. No reason why a QEDWiki mentality could not grow some Enterprise 2.0 wings.
What's more, Google and Amazon may have good reasons to get into the custom business services mashup arena. If there's a will, there's a way. Build, buy, or partner?
Hey, if Facebook can become the virtual home for scads of widgets and applications for the Web 2.0 crowd, who is going to achieve critical mass for such an environment for business services? Could be Serena.
They just have do do better than "Project Vail" for a name. General availability of the platform will come in the future, but expect to see Serena's free tool on a creative business users desktop near you this fall.
Unlike on-demand tools for content- and data-centric mashups, Serena with "Project Vail" has its sights on the visual tools-driven business-centric process and logic functions that IT departments just can't ever get to. We're talking HR, CRM, and supply chain applications -- the nuts and bolts of large enterprise logical functions. Because who said mashups were just for kids?
The notion is that business users have needs for small and often one-off web applications or widgets that support a small or modest process. They could go to their IT departments and ask for it, and they probably will be told "no," or that it will take months, and at staggering cost. IT is putting out fires, not adding small incremental efficiencies to department-level business stuff, right?
But like the long tail for media, there's a long tail for applications functionality, too. The trick is how to allow non-developers to mashup business services and processes, but also make such activities ultimately okay with IT. Can there be a rogue services development and deployment ecology inside enterprises that IT can live with? How can we ignite "innovation without permission" but not burn the house down?
Serena believes they can define and maintain such balances, and offer business process mashups via purely visual tools either on-premises or in the cloud. Serena, when it unveils Project Vail on Sept. 10, expects to produce a compelling and free mashup tool that MS Office power uses can quickly relate to. An Excel developer should actually produce business-centric mashups (no pivot tables required), so they say.
By making the tool free and virally distributed, Serena expects to seed the need for the on-premies servers they will license, or to become in-cloud host to the mashups. Serena will provide an all-online platform-as-a-service approach that they will charge for on a subscription basis, probably on a per-user/per month basis and perhaps also on a mashup by mashup basis. Imagine app dev from your HR department's petty cash account!
Now we're already seeing a lot of data mashups. And we've seen development as a service. But the notion business processes as a service has some interesting implications. And with a configuration management and ALM company -- which knows enterprise IT, as well as development efficiencies and applications/services lifecycles (not to mention how to leverage open source) -- well ... Serena might just be able to pull this off as well as anyone.
They will need to bridge the challenging uncharted waters between users, developers, IT as well as among and between SaaS, SOA, and packaged business applications. No easy task. But new Serena CEO Jeremy Burton has always struck me as a thought leader, never one to let his environment limit his gait.
If Serena can carve out leadership on this, there's a huge opportunity. IT departments -- as long as they are not held responsible for that over which they have little authority -- might actually like the notion of avoiding small custom applications chores. Having more on-demand or SaaS services might also grease the skids toward more use (and reuse) of SOA virtues. Allowing creative flexibility for line-of-business personnel to experiment with new approaches without involving developers could bear powerful fruit.
For example, if the mashups are solid and productive, well just use them as blueprints and requirements for more "sanctioned" and official application projects. These mashups could actually become incubators and laboratories for the rest of the developers to pick and choose from. Cool.
It will take a progressive CIO to see the value in this. This will have to be done with low risk to the enterprise. But being able to associate IT ALM with on-demand ALM will go a long way to making the Wild West of mashups seem more like the Midwest of IT creativity. Can be done.
Serena is leveraging its TeamTrack products to build out its new mashup tools, platform, and workflows. The way to create mashups for dummies (sorry) is to exploit workflow and process tools. Serena is working with OpSource for the hosting and multi-tenancy infrastructure.
If all of this works, the Serena platform could also evolve into a business mashup exchange, a solutions ecology for marketing services that could play very well with SOAs across small businesses and up to the largest enterprises and governments. There may even be federation between such an exchange and SOA registries and repositories. Shop till you drop.
The notion of business mashups as a service could become a sleeping tiger. Microsoft should like this a lot, even if they are only experimenting with consumery stuff now like Popfly. I actually think this also aligns with IBM's SOA strategy of vertically focused services and reuse. No reason why a QEDWiki mentality could not grow some Enterprise 2.0 wings.
What's more, Google and Amazon may have good reasons to get into the custom business services mashup arena. If there's a will, there's a way. Build, buy, or partner?
Hey, if Facebook can become the virtual home for scads of widgets and applications for the Web 2.0 crowd, who is going to achieve critical mass for such an environment for business services? Could be Serena.
They just have do do better than "Project Vail" for a name. General availability of the platform will come in the future, but expect to see Serena's free tool on a creative business users desktop near you this fall.
RSS feeds begin to bleed into enterprise applications
You've probably just gotten used to the idea of "mashups" for quickly bringing web services into applications and portals. Well, now get ready for making novel and powerful use of content via RSS feeds in a similar way.
I don't call them mashups, though, I call them "Feed Bleeds." That's because syndicated feeds can be easily bled into one another to form aggregated streams of content. Not only that, the users and/or developers can increasingly control how much of one type of content should be bled in with another.
The use of RSS feeds as conduits for distributing and managing content, data, and media acts as a complement to more programmatic displays of appropriate relational data in applications via such means as ODBC, JDBC and SQL. Whereas these data access protocols target structured content, the RSS and/or Atom feeds open up the spigot to much more information.
What's newly powerful is that nearly any kind of content can be driven through these feeds -- from documents, spreadsheets, and data to video, blogs, podcasts and online HTML instruction manuals. Feed Bleeds allow for human knowledge in natural language to mingle and complement IT-based assets such as data, application services and automated event-driven processes. Think of it as broad integration on the cheap -- and fast.
Unlike programmatic approaches, the developer can hand off to the end users the subscription to and fine-tuning of the content feeds. Users can adjust how much or how little on a subject they want. Businesses can control what feeds are allowed into the network. Get general information on one business subject and highly specific content on another. The work process need determines the right mix of procured feeds.
Indeed, the users can begin to use search in-house or and online directories to find the syndicated content they wish to add to their applications and process views. We're now seeing a lot more custom enterprise applications that contain and exploit RSS-based content. We're seeing enterprises identify more in-house content that they should expose as feeds.
I think the new Feed Bleed benefits are too powerful to ignore. By quickly finding information on almost any topic that's delivered through lightweight syndication, subscriber/aggregators can shape that information flow to help them in their work, then adjust the content qualitatively and quantitatively as needed to best contour the information to the tasks at hand.
Developers can give the users the tools to make content appear in context to business processes. RSS-enabled Windows Vista and many freely available, standalone news readers help, but a cadre of back-end servers with associated APIs also now allow the productive exploitation of feeds, content and services within applications. We're even seeing a conceptual page borrowed from service oriented architecture (SOA) in the form of RSS feed "buses." This really is a case of Web 2.0 leading to Enterprise 2.0, leading to mainstream enterprise IT.
On-premises servers provide the management and integration of feeds. There are also on-demand feed tools. Onsite feed bleed providers include Apatar, Inc., JackBe, Kapow Technologies, RSSBus, and Strikeiron, Inc. These suppliers allow all kinds of content (HTML, XML, PDFs, spreadsheets, CMS, RDBs, SOAP, REST, as well as RSS/Atom) to be bled together, organized, managed and presented. Online mashup tools come from Dapper, OpenKapow, Teqlo, and Yahoo Pipes, among others. Apatar also has a hosted online offering in the works.
What's more, software as a service (SaaS) business applications providers like Salesforce.com (maps and data merge) and Workday are providing more mashups and feeds-based and enhanced services. If it's good for a SaaS provider, it should be good for an enterprise (as it acts as the service provider to its internal and partner users).
The open source world is also a fan of feed bleeds. An increasingly effective lightweight database aggregation approach involves creating specific feeds of data from, say, MySQL data and SugarCRM applications, that are then aggregated into common feeds that provide a single view of a customer, or an order, or a business process. This allows for whole new kinds of workflows, applications, and processes -- but on an agile time-frame. Interfaces are quickly evolving to allow for drag and drop means to create and adapt feeds. Even a business manager could do it!
IBM's vice president of emerging technologies, Rod Smith, is a fan of giving users the ability to finer-tune the content they need for their jobs. IBM itself has produced what it calls a "situational application" tool, a mashup enabler built on Zend Framework called QEDWiki (Quick and Easily Done). Smith recently told me he likes the idea of bringing together the Web 2.0 and enterprise IT communities so they can begin to work together, even if they don't necessarily speak the same language.
As Web 2.0 empowers younger workers to manage content online in new ways, they will want to use similar approaches on the job. Should this de done via an end-run around IT? Or should IT embrace and extend mashups and feed bleeds?
I think it's clear that this one is too good to ignore.
I don't call them mashups, though, I call them "Feed Bleeds." That's because syndicated feeds can be easily bled into one another to form aggregated streams of content. Not only that, the users and/or developers can increasingly control how much of one type of content should be bled in with another.
The use of RSS feeds as conduits for distributing and managing content, data, and media acts as a complement to more programmatic displays of appropriate relational data in applications via such means as ODBC, JDBC and SQL. Whereas these data access protocols target structured content, the RSS and/or Atom feeds open up the spigot to much more information.
What's newly powerful is that nearly any kind of content can be driven through these feeds -- from documents, spreadsheets, and data to video, blogs, podcasts and online HTML instruction manuals. Feed Bleeds allow for human knowledge in natural language to mingle and complement IT-based assets such as data, application services and automated event-driven processes. Think of it as broad integration on the cheap -- and fast.
Unlike programmatic approaches, the developer can hand off to the end users the subscription to and fine-tuning of the content feeds. Users can adjust how much or how little on a subject they want. Businesses can control what feeds are allowed into the network. Get general information on one business subject and highly specific content on another. The work process need determines the right mix of procured feeds.
Indeed, the users can begin to use search in-house or and online directories to find the syndicated content they wish to add to their applications and process views. We're now seeing a lot more custom enterprise applications that contain and exploit RSS-based content. We're seeing enterprises identify more in-house content that they should expose as feeds.
I think the new Feed Bleed benefits are too powerful to ignore. By quickly finding information on almost any topic that's delivered through lightweight syndication, subscriber/aggregators can shape that information flow to help them in their work, then adjust the content qualitatively and quantitatively as needed to best contour the information to the tasks at hand.
Developers can give the users the tools to make content appear in context to business processes. RSS-enabled Windows Vista and many freely available, standalone news readers help, but a cadre of back-end servers with associated APIs also now allow the productive exploitation of feeds, content and services within applications. We're even seeing a conceptual page borrowed from service oriented architecture (SOA) in the form of RSS feed "buses." This really is a case of Web 2.0 leading to Enterprise 2.0, leading to mainstream enterprise IT.
On-premises servers provide the management and integration of feeds. There are also on-demand feed tools. Onsite feed bleed providers include Apatar, Inc., JackBe, Kapow Technologies, RSSBus, and Strikeiron, Inc. These suppliers allow all kinds of content (HTML, XML, PDFs, spreadsheets, CMS, RDBs, SOAP, REST, as well as RSS/Atom) to be bled together, organized, managed and presented. Online mashup tools come from Dapper, OpenKapow, Teqlo, and Yahoo Pipes, among others. Apatar also has a hosted online offering in the works.
What's more, software as a service (SaaS) business applications providers like Salesforce.com (maps and data merge) and Workday are providing more mashups and feeds-based and enhanced services. If it's good for a SaaS provider, it should be good for an enterprise (as it acts as the service provider to its internal and partner users).
The open source world is also a fan of feed bleeds. An increasingly effective lightweight database aggregation approach involves creating specific feeds of data from, say, MySQL data and SugarCRM applications, that are then aggregated into common feeds that provide a single view of a customer, or an order, or a business process. This allows for whole new kinds of workflows, applications, and processes -- but on an agile time-frame. Interfaces are quickly evolving to allow for drag and drop means to create and adapt feeds. Even a business manager could do it!
IBM's vice president of emerging technologies, Rod Smith, is a fan of giving users the ability to finer-tune the content they need for their jobs. IBM itself has produced what it calls a "situational application" tool, a mashup enabler built on Zend Framework called QEDWiki (Quick and Easily Done). Smith recently told me he likes the idea of bringing together the Web 2.0 and enterprise IT communities so they can begin to work together, even if they don't necessarily speak the same language.
As Web 2.0 empowers younger workers to manage content online in new ways, they will want to use similar approaches on the job. Should this de done via an end-run around IT? Or should IT embrace and extend mashups and feed bleeds?
I think it's clear that this one is too good to ignore.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Apache Camel addresses need for discrete infrastructure for services mediation and routing
Read a full transcript of the discussion. Listen to the podcast. Sponsor: IONA Technologies.
One size fits all has its limits. Most developers prefer to cherry-pick their infrastructure resources, keep them lightweight, and remain as agile as they can.
Taking a clue from this philosophy, the Apache Software Foundation has dozens of open source projects under way to build out the discrete infrastructure assets through community input and involvement, while also providing a needed balance between choice and automation.
One such project, Apache Camel, a sub-set of Apache ActiveMQ, is nearing maturity milestones that will make it a unique approach to middleware services mediation and routing. It's also becoming an essential ingredient to IONA's FUSE offerings.
To learn more about Apache Camel and its value to developers and operators, I recently sat down with James Strachan, technical director of engineering at IONA Technologies, and longtime Apache developer and committer.
Here are some excerpts from the discussion:
The problem we’re trying to address is the routing and mediation problem, which lots of people have. They're taking data from various components and sources -- whether it’s files, databases, message queues, Web services, instant messaging, or other data systems, integrating them together, formatting them, and connecting them to the systems. From a higher level perspective, this could be for legacy integration of systems, for smart routing, performance, monitoring, or testing or monitoring transaction flows.
Apache Camel grew organically from code and ideas from a bunch of other Apache projects, particularly Apache ActiveMQ and Apache ServiceMix. We found that people wanted to create and use patterns from the "Enterprise Integration Patterns" book in many different scenarios.
I definitely recommend people read Gregor Hohpe's book "Enterprise Integration Patterns." He offers a really good patterns catalog of how people should do mediation and integration. Rather like the original Gang of Four "Design Patterns" book, which describes low-level programming things, Gregor’s book describes very well how enterprise integration patterns (EIPs) can work and gives us a language for describing them.
Some people wanted to use these patterns inside an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), some people wanted to use these patterns inside a message broker, and other people wanted to use these patterns inside an application itself or to talk between messaging providers. Still other people wanted to use them inside a Web services framework or some other communication platform.
What we tried to do with Camel was give it the smallest footprint possible, so that it can be reused anywhere, whether in a servlet, in the Web services stack, inside a full ESB, or a messaging application.
We work very closely with the ServiceMix community at Apache which has created a complete Java Business Integration (JBI)-compliant container of JBI components. Camel can be deployed within the ServiceMix ESB among JBI components, but some people don’t use JBI and they may just use Java Message Service (JMS) or they may just use Web services or they may just be JAX-WS clients or whatever. So, we try to make Camel agnostic to technologies. You can use it within patterns like Spring, or JBI or OSGi, or you can use it within any application.
Across all of IT we’re seeing increased specialization in many different areas, where the specialization helps us solve a problem at a higher level. ... And because we’re doing it an open-source environment where there’s a community involved, there's more likelihood that this will be applied across many other different types of platforms and technology.
Camel is unique in a number of ways. What we’re doing with Camel is defining a high-level language to describe EIPs, which I don’t think anybody else has done before. The other thing that’s unique is that this language very closely maps to components that work inside Spring 2. ... What we’re doing is raising the abstraction level to make things very simple, reducing the amount of XML we have to write, but still exposing the wire-level access if you need to do the really hard stuff and roll your sleeves up and get down and dirty.
People don’t have to worry about the low-level details of how to use JMS, how to use JBI, or how to wire together the Spring components correctly, and so forth. We're giving people a nice, simple, high-level abstraction, but yet we are exposing all the power of frameworks like Spring and still exposing the low-level details if you need them.People really want small and simple-to-use components that solve the problems they have. I've seen that throughout all of our customers. People ask for very specific solutions. They don’t say, "Give me a SOA." They say, "I need a message router," "I need a message bus," "I need an ESB," or "I need a services framework." Often, people have very specific requirements and are very much cherry-picking the best-of-breed components from the open-source tool set
If you go to http://open.iona.com, there is a whole raft of documentation online forums, a wiki, and so forth.
Read a full transcript of the discussion. Listen to the podcast. Sponsor: IONA Technologies. Produced by Interarbor Solutions: analysis, consulting and rich new-media content production.
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