Dennis Byron (Research 2.0)

Sun-MySQL: The Real Winner is Oracle

TIBCOMonkey --

The reference to SAP should have made clearer that I was referring to its NetWeaver business. As described in many previous posts, SAP in CY 2006 made impressive gains in the middleware market. SAP landed “standalone” middleware business not dependent on its ERP business. Based on the exchange rate used in its 20-F, SAP recognized more than $1B in license/maintenance/li... revenue for NetWeaver in the 12 months ending March 31, 2007.

In fact, counting Business Objects but not counting BEA, SAP probably surpassed Oracle in the middleware market in 2007. That's the part of SAP Sun will be competing with.

Dennis

Users Lose Middleware Choice in Oracle Acquisition of BEA

My apologies to Joe Forgione and Herb Osher. How could I forget Hyperdesk!

Users Lose Middleware Choice in Oracle Acquisition of BEA

Did BEA "pretty much launch" the independent middleware market?

In addition to the comment above questioning my middleware history analysis, I've received a few emails and a phone call on the subject. So here goes:

The key word in my analysis is "market." Prior to BEA, most of the independent software vendors that made middleware positioned themselves as tools suppliers. I believe BEA led the way in turning the value proposition on its head, saying "here's the tools, pay us for the number of instances of the resulting run-time code you deploy." That's what makes a market: the value proposition behind the buying and selling in the bazaar, not just making the product.

As I said in the post, Iona predated BEA as did Netwise, Transarc and a few others. But they didn't really push the deployment value proposition. And since IBM funded Camelot at CMU and quickly bought Transarc after it was founded, I would argue Transarc was not "independent."

Independent is another key word in the analysis. Most of the early middleware was part of the leading systems suppliers' stacks (to which it has returned, which is the real point I was trying to make in the post).

So whether you agree with my analysis or not, raise a glass of your favorite libation this weekend to Actional, Allaire, Antares, Ascential, Bluestone, Crossworlds (and the woman in the red dress), Haht, Mercator, Oberon, Persistence, SeeBeyond, Silverstream, Staffware, WebMethods, etc and all the other middleware memories.

[By the way, lest you think I just fell of the turnip truck, I fell of the turnip truck a long time ago.

I started researching "middleware" when Chris Stone was forming the Object Management Group in the late 1980s while still physically located in the Data General facilities on Computer Drive in Westboro.

I was the primary "middleware" analyst for the Datapro division of McGraw Hill from 1991 to 1997 and wrote monthly articles for Application Development Trends during the same time period. I put the term "middleware" in quotes because I don't actually remember using the term "middleware" regularly until 1995 doing some consulting for Noblenet (later part of RogueWave, later aquired by Quovadx).

After a hiatus doing ERP research, I was the IDC "middleware" analyst from 2003 to 2006. Again I put the term in quotes because by then it was called application deployment software :) ]

MySQL and BEA: Wednesday’s Two Big Acquisitions

Sramana--SAP doesn't promote it a lot, particularly outside of Germany, but actually SAP does have a database called SAP DB. They bought it (or the rights to it) from Software AG, I think, and made it open source in 2006 or so. The acqusition was basically a customer protection move back around 2000 or so but it gives SAP a jumping off point as solid as Sun's with MySQl if it chose to do so.--Dennis

SAP 4Q Results: Enterprise Application Market Strong

Actually this growth is more impressive than IBM's because of the exchange-rate issue you raise. IBM's growth--which is buoyed by acquisitions--needs to get adjusted down for the same reason you note that SAP's needs to be adjusted up.

But how this reflects on the overall enterprise applications market depends on how much of this growth is from NetWeaver middleware vs. classic SAP applications. In the recent past, NetWeaver has been a major growth driver for SAP more than enterprise applications.

And sorry but SAP's self-selected measurement of the "core enterprise applications" market is of very little value in understanding SAP's relative growth or decline against competitors. It's unclear who they count as competitors. It is unclear if they include NetWeaver revenue. It is unclear where they get the 7% "industry analyst projection." But it is clear that they are achieving this self-determined share growth by claiming to participate in only about 15% of the overall software market as defined in their SEC filings.