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Jason Stamper's Blog: February 2006 Archives
Has Oracle ousted BEA at HP?
February 15, 2006
No it hasn’t, but BEA still won’t like it. Yesterday HP announced a tighter partnership between its services arm and Oracle, and specifically Oracle Fusion Middleware. HP will be offering support and services to Oracle Fusion Middleware customers, in addition to its existing ability to resell Oracle Fusion Middleware, announced last October. HP said it will incorporate Fusion Middleware into its service-oriented architecture (SOA) systems integration services business. But where does all this leave HP’s relations with its former preferred middleware vendor, BEA?
What has Sun done with SeeBeyond?
February 09, 2006
I caught up with Sun Microsystems yesterday at The Tower Hotel directly opposite Tower Bridge and the imposing Tower of London. The Tower Hotel is a fine example of a missed opportunity: one of the most spectacular views in the world, utterly ruined by the fact the hotel itself is a concrete monstrosity. Possibly the least sensitive building ever to grace its surroundings, it's from an age I've heard architects call 'English Brutalism'.
To be fair the conference rooms are actually pretty good, the views are indeed stunning, and the coffee is fresh and strong - things are looking up. I was there to ask Sun what they have done with integration and composite application development player SeeBeyond, which it announced it was acquiring for $387m in June last year.
The day I met Ken Livingstone
February 05, 2006
I bumped into the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone the other day, or rather he bumped into me. He was trying so hard not to be recognised while he picked up some groceries at his local supermarket - keeping all but his eyes covered by a scarf - that he failed to not run over my foot with his trolley.
To make matters worse, his trolley was being passengered at the time by one of his young children - it could have been his son or his daughter because I was too embarrassed to look them in the eye - who thought it simply hilarious that daddy had crashed his trolley.
With all the excitement, and since I had determined to pretend that I had not realised that it was the Mayor of London who had just run over my foot, since Ken was trying so hard not to be recognised, I confess all I was able to stammer was 'sorry', even though I was clearly not the cause of the crash (nor do I accept liability for it for insurance purposes, before you get any ideas, Mr Livingstone).
After this brief encounter I chastised myself for not having anything more serious to say to my Mayor, or for not at least asking a searching question about London's transport. For instance, why when Hackney (my 'manor') is without a tube, is the Silverlink Metro service so woeful? (Only four or five trains an hour, and when they do come they are often as not dangerously overcrowded.)
I am sure he's glad though that I was only able to mumble apologies and amble away, because it must get right tedious hearing everyone's gripes about their buses and tubes as he goes about his business. Indeed I overheard one of the Waitrose check-out blokes say to another: "Look, there's your mate Livingstone. Go and ask him why your bus was so late this morning!"; "Don't be daft," was his colleague's efficient response.
Aaanyway since I had nothing to say for myself when I met my Mayor I thought I would express a political opinion posthumously, as it were, with a little poem about another aspect of London Transport that a lot of people were saddened by - the demise of the old Routemaster buses. The Routemasters (pictured below for our American friends who I am sure will wonder what the hell I'm on about) are being phased out and replaced by modern, long, bendy buses, you see. Perhaps Ken will see this and publish me in Poems on the Underground - now that we're practically best friends and all. Perhaps not.
Routemaster R.I.P
And so it seems, this is the end.
Your time is up, you would not bend
To fashion, safety, rules and reg's -
No more will passengers have to use their legs
(At least not as fast, at any rate).
No more your conductors, with their ticket machines
Your running board, stairs, upper deck - your dreams.
It's over now; perhaps you know
There's a new bus in town - they're letting you go.
It's safe, and bendy:
But boring, un-trendy.
It's no longer thrilling to travel the buses
Though safety-wise they're convinced there are pluses.
But before you 'ting' twice for the stop in the sky
Come via my place for one last try,
"Climb on, hold tight!"
Jump off while you're moving?
Know what? I just might.
Image source: www.savetheroutemaster.com.
RightNow crows about open source uptime
February 02, 2006
On-demand customer service software maven RightNow just can't help putting the boot into rival salesforce.com while it's got the chance. A spokesperson told me that it was not its intention to sling mud at the comeptition, but you have to admit that the timing of RightNow's news, which happens to coincide with news of some outages over at salesforce.com, is a little suspicious.
Salesforce.com has suffered a number of well publicised outages to its service in the past few months, so it is a good time for RightNow to be highlighting the fact that it had 99.98% uptime in 2005 - and guess what, it puts that down to open source.
Correction: racism in the media?
February 01, 2006
Buried on page 32 of today's Guardian newspaper (Feb 1st) is a rather major correction. Ostensibly it's just that the figures used in a previous story were a little out of kilter, but in fact the correction reverses the whole angle of the original story - something no editor is keen on admitting. It's a way of saying, 'You know that story we did a while back - well we used incorrect information and came to dubious conclusions'.
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