Tagged 
IBM Open Standards | 1 Reference
IBM Open Standards | 1 Reference 
Friday
03Oct
Standards, open standards and double standards
October 3, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
In my last post I took Big Blue to task for its announcement that it intends to wage war against Microsoft in the world’s standards bodies. The motivation for this bellicose declaration was IBM’s stinging defeat last Spring in its battle to prevent the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) from ratifying Microsoft’s de facto office document standard (OOXML).
IBM charges that Microsoft won at the ISO only because it packed the national standards organizations that make up the ISO membership with its pals. The suits in Armonk are shocked (shocked!) to discover that Microsoft actually tried to influence the outcome of a debate where its vital interests were at stake, namely its ability to sell Office to the world’s governments.
But the thing that galls me about IBM’s position – and the reason I wrote my post – is not its goody-two-shoes stance about lobbying. No, it’s the flagrant hypocrisy behind this whole open standards campaign. In a nutshell, Big Blue conspicuously fails to practice what it preaches.
Monday
29Sep
The emperor of standards has no clothes
September 29, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
The suits at IBM are in a snit. According to the Wall Street Journal, the world’s largest computer company is threatening to pull out of certain international standards bodies because it has “become frustrated” by what it views as their “opaque processes and poor decision-making.” IBM’s press release on the subject is somewhat milder in tone, being a tree-hugging, planet-loving paean to the virtues of open standards and, just as important, open standards making processes. Who could object to that? However, beneath the velvet glove there lies a fist of some decidedly more ferrous material. IBM wants everyone to know that if it doesn’t like the quality of certain standards bodies’ work, it will lobby for changes in the way they operate, incite local governments to force them to reform, or even drop out of them altogether.
Tagged Microsoft IBM Open Standards
Microsoft IBM Open Standards Wednesday
24Sep
How to make a killing in the mainframe market
September 24, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
The following is a hypothetical case study of the market for enterprise-class computer systems. To the best of my knowledge the events described herein have not yet occurred. However, it is possible that they may do so in the near future. If they do come to pass, they are likely to be the subject one day of exhaustive case studies in America’s leading business schools. Like all good case studies, this one is open ended, because its outcome will depend on the choices and actions of the players involved.
Suppose you are the CEO of a computer manufacturer who has decided to present an exciting new business idea to your board of directors. You propose nothing less than to turn your company around by entering the lucrative multi-billion dollar market for high-end machines that run IBM’s 64 bit operating system z/OS.
Monday
15Sep
How to build an open source mainframe in your kitchen
September 15, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
Can you build a mainframe computer at home in your spare time? On your kitchen table? Using only common utensils and your bare hands? And no, I don’t mean a toy mainframe, but a real one – one that runs all of IBM’s most powerful software, including CICS, DB2, the classic MVS operating system and the newer 64 bit z/OS, and even the mainframe version of Linux (z/Linux). Well, can you?
This question may sound insane to you. But the answer to it happens to be yes, you certainly can, if you are named Roger Bowler. Bowler is a mainframe systems programmer who decided in the late 1990s that he wanted to have a “real computer” at home instead of some dinky PC. So he fired up his text editor and his C compiler and set to work. The result was the Hercules mainframe emulator, that is to say, a mainframe built entirely in software that runs on off-the-shelf Intel-based hardware, typically under Windows or Linux.
Tagged Open Source IBM Mainframe T3 Hercules
Open Source IBM Mainframe T3 Hercules Thursday
21Aug
The mainframe isn’t dead after all
August 21, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
Last week I had the occasion to visit SHARE, the premier mainframe conference, which was held in San Jose just down the road from where I live. Based on what I saw, there is one thing I can tell you for sure, and that is that Cobol is not dead. And neither is the mainframe.
When I mentioned to one of my friends that I had been to SHARE, he joked that it must have looked like an AARP convention. But this turned out not to be so. While there were certainly a few 60-somethings strolling around the halls, the under 40 generation was also well represented. What struck me the most was not the advanced age of the people but the relative youth of a lot of the software being discussed.
Tuesday
12Aug
IBM says 99.8% of mainframe market not enough, we want it all
August 12, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
Here’s an interesting story about a guy who has had several horses shot out from under him by IBM, and has finally decided to shoot back.
Steven Friedman is the President of Tampa-based T3 Technologies, which has been in the business of selling IBM-compatible mainframe systems to low-end users for 16 years. For the first 14 of those years T3 worked hand-in-hand with IBM to build out a segment of the market that was too small for IBM’s own royally compensated sales force to bother with.
But in the fall of 2006 IBM abruptly terminated its long-standing relationship with T3. The trigger seems to have been T3’s plan to resell another line of mainframe-compatible systems based on technology from a hot new VC-funded Silicon Valley startup, the now defunct Platform Solutions.
Overnight T3 went from a booming business with over 600 installed customers worldwide to a company that literally had nothing to sell. Since the Department of Justice had decided in 2001 to dissolve the famous Consent Decree which had for more than fifty years compelled IBM to play nice with competitors, there was apparently nothing to prevent Big Blue from getting away with this egregious instance of squashing the little guy.
Tagged IBM Government Mainframe T3
IBM Government Mainframe T3 Sunday
10Aug
Governator stubs toe on antique computer
August 10, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
The New York Times and the Sacramento Bee are reporting an amusing story out of California about how Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to knock some sense into the state’s free spending legislators is being stymied by an antiquated mainframe computer system.
You see, California is having its annual summer shouting match between angry pols who can’t agree on next year’s budget. Democrats want to raise taxes and spend more, while Republicans – guess what? – want to put the kibosh on new taxes and cut spending instead. Schwarzenegger – known in these parts as the “Governator” – is standing between the two warring camps, with the rock steady firmness of a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator.
Tagged IBM Government
IBM Government Monday
04Aug
The AMQP debate continues
August 4, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
I’m happy to report that my long post last week on the new enterprise messaging protocol AMQP has stirred up an interesting debate among members of the open source messaging community. Check out Bryan Che’s blog for a series of comments. Bryan works in product management at Red Hat overseeing the MRG project I mentioned in my original post (i.e. Red Hat’s productization of messaging, realtime and grid which includes the Apache Qpid implementation of AMQP). Thanks to Bryan for calling out my post.
The debate boils down to one issue: Has the AMQP spec grown so complex that it’s become too hard to implement? Given the freewheeling spirit of the open source software community, it comes as no surprise that opinions vary, even among people working closely together.
Monday
28Jul
Can AMQP break IBM's MOM monopoly? (Part 1)
July 28, 2008 What Is AMQP All About?
By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
In this three part series I discuss the emerging open source standard for business messaging, AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). Part 1 is a non-technical introduction to the basic ideas behind the protocol. In Parts 2 and 3, I chat with two leading AMQP developers, Carl Trieloff of Red Hat (Part 2) and Alexis Richardson of RabbitMQ (Part 3).
tagged AMQP Part1 Tagged Open Source IBM Middleware AMQP
AMQP Part1 Tagged Open Source IBM Middleware AMQP Monday
28Jul
Can AMQP break IBM's MOM monopoly? (Part 2)
July 28, 2008 A Chat with Carl Trieloff about Apache Qpid and Red Hat MRG
By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
In this three part series I discuss the emerging open source standard for business messaging, AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). Part 1 provided a non-technical introduction to the basic ideas behind the protocol. In Parts 2 and 3, I chat with two leading AMQP developers, Carl Trieloff of Red Hat (Part 2) and Alexis Richardson of RabbitMQ (Part 3).
In addition to running Red Hat’s MRG initiative, Carl Trieloff is a key member of the Apache Qpid project.
tagged AMQP Part3 Tagged Open Source Red Hat IBM Middleware AMQP
AMQP Part3 Tagged Open Source Red Hat IBM Middleware AMQP Monday
28Jul
Can AMQP break IBM's MOM monopoly? (Part 3)
July 28, 2008 A Chat with Alexis Richardson about AMQP and RabbitMQ
By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
In this three part series I discuss the emerging open source standard for business messaging, AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). Part 1 provided a non-technical introduction to the basic ideas behind the protocol. In Parts 2 and 3, I chat with two leading AMQP developers, Carl Trieloff of Red Hat (Part 2) and Alexis Richardson of RabbitMQ (Part 3).
In addition to being one of the developers of the innovative RabbitMQ implementation of AMQP, Alexis Richardson is also the co-founder of UK consulting firm CohesiveFT.
Sunday
13Jul
MuleSource calls out IBM's double standard on open source
July 13, 2008 A chat with David Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource
By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
Granting that the open source players are starting out from a small revenue base, simple math tells us that if they keep on growing at their present pace they will sooner or later put some real hurt on the sales of incumbent closed source vendors like IBM and Oracle, who have long dominated enterprise middleware and database sales.I had a chance to explore that and other issues recently with the CEO of one of these new open source middleware challengers, David Rosenberg of MuleSource, a company best known for its Mule ESB product. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
Tagged IBM Middleware
IBM Middleware Thursday
03Jul
IBM vs PSI: Goliath slays David
July 3, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
Well, this sad little story has now come to an end. PSI is no more. IBM purchased the company this week for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the tens of millions of dollars, thus extinguishing PSI's legal claims against it, and – more importantly – cementing a monopoly that is now more complete than at any time since Amdahl launched the first plug-compatible mainframe in 1975.
But aren't antitrust laws supposed to prevent this kind of thing? Surprisingly enough, the answer might be no. According to the Wall Street Journal, IBM believes PSI's revenues are too small to trigger action by either the U.S. Department of Justice or the European Union in Brussels. In other words, IBM is saying that since they already own 99.9% of the market, squashing the one remaining competitor who has 0.1% is no big deal.
Tagged IBM Government
IBM Government Sunday
04May
Time to choose, Ubuntu fans: rage or reason?
May 4, 2008 By Jeff Gould, CEO & Director of Research, Peerstone Research
My post last week about Ubuntu's embrace of the profit motive (exemplified in sponsor Canonical's release of a proprietary and non-free management tool) triggered a pretty remarkable flood of venom and invective in my direction.
However, it does sometimes interfere with cognition. For example, a lot of the commenters on my post assumed that I was attacking Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth for wanting to make money. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just to be clear, let me state the following, which I place in italics in the hopes of snaring the attention even of those Ubuntu fans who don't read posts in their entirety before banging out enraged comments.
Tagged Linux Open Source Ubuntu
Linux Open Source Ubuntu Wednesday
30Apr
Is Ubuntu selling out or growing up?
April 30, 2008 By Jeff Gould, Peerstone Research / Interop News
Sometimes I wonder whether Ubuntu is really an open source software company any more.
Yes, yes, I realize Ubuntu is not a company at all but a free Linux distribution, GPL'd and open source by definition. But still, the Ubuntu distro is sponsored by a traditional for profit company,
The answer that has recently emerged to this question is, "yes and no."
Yes, of course, because Ubuntu's web site promises that the distro "will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates." But Ubuntu the enterprise ecosystem – understood as the collection of desktops and servers running Ubuntu in a given organization – is not.
Tagged Linux Open Source Ubuntu
Linux Open Source Ubuntu