• AttunityLtd announced preliminary Q4 earnings
• Excelon files annual 10-K report
• Lutris is leaving the commercial App Server market
• ObjectFrontier releases a new version of FrontierSuite
• Orbism gets a competitor
• Silverstream implements WSFL, reports 2001 revenues
• Softwired iBus//Mobile picked for HP Netaction
• Sonic finally rolls out SonicXQ under the "Enterprise Service Bus" tag
• Talarian announced SmartPGM(TM) version 3.1 and SmartPGM FX version 3.1
  • Tibco strategy for Talarian
• Versata announces results for 10 months (short year) to Oct 31 2001
• Vitria is to cut jobs by 20 percent to reduce costs
• Aberdeen Group Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Reach $1.43 trillion by 2005
• Credit Suisse First Boston has migrated its worldwide financial trading architecture from UNIX to Red Hat Linux
• Gartner view on Java
• Giga study reveals J2EE market shares for 2001
• Reuters may buy out Instinet minority shareholders
• Sonic on Messaging, JMS and Web Services

AttunityLtd announced preliminary Q4 earnings

saying Market conditions during Q4 were extremely difficult"

• Revenues for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2001 were around $2.1 million.

• Revenues for the 12 months ended December 31, 2001 were around $16.8 million. http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020403/32463_1.html

Attunity is a SpiritSoft partner. Q4 looks extremely poor compared with rest of the year, caused partly by restructuring impact

Excelon files annual 10-K report

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/020402/22190_1.html and http://www.exceloncorp.com/news/press_releases/april_02_02_10k.shtml

Licensed revenue collapsed by > 50% from Q4/2001; full year revenue $49M down from $70M. Excelon's ObjectStore business is fast disappearing; they are trying to ramp up Javlin (J2EE mid-tier data caching) and other newer products to take the strain

Lutris is leaving the commercial App Server market

http://e-serv.ebizq.net/news/news043202.html and comments at http://www.theserverside.com/home/thread.jsp?thread_id=12848

Their reasons may be of interest as we consider whether to support/resell other people's app servers

ObjectFrontier releases a new version of FrontierSuite

http://www.theserverside.com/home/thread.jsp?thread_id=12770 FrontierSuite is a development environment/platform for building portable J2EE applications, deployable across any J2EE/JDO/J2SE platform and any JDBC/JCA compliant data source. http://www.objectfrontier.com/Products/FrontierSuite/frontiersuite.html

Note that this product includes distributed caching based on JMS - sounds familiar?

Orbism gets a competitor

Eternal Systems took the stage at last week's Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco as a new player in the advanced middleware market. The company released versions of FT/ORB and NIFTI fault-detector notifier software. http://www.eternal-systems.com/news/single_pr.asp?press_id=11

Orbism are developing similar products - they also act as a professional services partner for us

Silverstream implements WSFL, reports 2001 revenues

SilverStream is claiming to be the first company to produce an XML integration server (Extend) based on IBM's Web Services Flow Language (WSFL) http://www.cw360.com/bin/bladerunner?REQSESS=7n044F05&690REQEVENT=&CARTI=111311&CARTT=1&CCAT=1&CCHAN=11&CFLAV=1&CPAGEN=ArticlePage&CPAGET=-99999&CSEARCH=&CSESS=-99999&CTOPIC=

Total revenue decreased 16% to $67.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2001 from $80.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2000 ($23.1 million for 1999). http://biz.yahoo.com/e/020328/sssw.html http://www.silverstream.com/Website/app/en_US/PressReleaseDetail?id=01add0d6b5384722b0f804753b9e3b79

They still have $124M in working capital to tide them through - that should just tide them over a 170% net loss (= $115M)

Softwired iBus//Mobile picked for HP Netaction

SoftWired iBus//Mobile technology is being incorporated into the new Mobile Toolkit for HP Netaction Application Server (HP AS) http://www.messageq.com/news/news04602.html http://www.softwired-inc.com/pdf/news/hp270302.pdf

Softwired is also proposing iBus//Mobile as the link between .Net and J2EE http://www.softwired-inc.com/pdf/news/mobile260302.pdf _with native JMS for .NET, small footprint client (12k) for mobile, plus web services (SOAP client for JMS) and applet support.

The Softwired CEO seemed to spend more time on our stand than on his at JavaOne; they are rumoured to be very down on revenue_

Sonic finally rolls out SonicXQ under the "Enterprise Service Bus" tag

"The SonicXQ ESB provides a standards-based service-oriented architecture that uses Web services and the J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) to help systems architects locate integration services, such as transformation, within the ESB and scale services independently of one another." http://www.sonicsoftware.com/news/index.htm

_Can Sonic persuade enterprises to adopt proprietary routing/filtering mechanisms?

• also reports Sonera Juxto and ABNA (a subsidiary of Associated British Foods) as XQ customers - big names again (not!).

• Sonic's latest customer list can be found in All Public Folders/Market Research/Sonic Software (thanks Damian Canning) as "Latest Customer List" I don't know the provenance of this - consider it as a prospecting list..._

Talarian announced SmartPGM(TM) version 3.1 and SmartPGM FX version 3.1

http://www.talarian.com/press/2002/PGM31.shtml and http://www.messageq.com/news/news043102.html They also announced Primex as a customer (http://www.talarian.com/press/2002/primex.shtml)

The Primex Auction(tm) is the creation of Primex Trading N.A., LLC, a partnership formed by securities industry brokerage firms and investment banks including Merrill Lynch, Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities

Tibco strategy for Talarian

Tibco has published its development strategy for the recently acquired Talarian products (dated Feb 15): http://www.talarian.com/press/2002/TibTalr.pdf

_Essentially - keep developing SmartSockets 6.2 and 7.0, to offer interoperability between Tibco and Talarian messaging technology, and to consolidate onto a "single multicast initiative". Completion of the acquisition is expected this month. _

Versata announces results for 10 months (short year) to Oct 31 2001

• net loss of around $62M on sales of $29.4M (sales/month down from $4.7M to $2.9M)

• 233 jobs cut in 10 months to Oct; 40 more since leaving around 125 left.

• http://biz.yahoo.com/e/020329/vata.html

Vitria is to cut jobs by 20 percent to reduce costs

http://www.vitria.com/news/press_releases/pr_2002-04-09.html

Aberdeen Group Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Reach $1.43 trillion by 2005

IT spending growth - when it comes - will be significantly lower than the double-digit rates observed in the late 1990s http://www.aberdeen.com/ab_company/hottopics/tfc-itspending/default.htm (price $695 for the full report)

Credit Suisse First Boston has migrated its worldwide financial trading architecture from UNIX to Red Hat Linux

http://www.it-director.com/article.php?id=2764

Linux continues to gain references and credibility

Gartner view on Java

A Gartner presentation "Status of Java" given at JavaOne can be found at \\file-1\marketing\Competitive_Positioning\Background\Java_Status_Gartner.ppt

Giga study reveals J2EE market shares for 2001

http://www.theserverside.com/home/thread.jsp?thread_id=12595

Full articles are available at:

• http://www.gigaweb.com/browsemktg/0,2973,strComp%25253Dgigaflash,00.html#GF4

• http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/020321/200203211614000597_1.html

Giga's Erin Kinikin - VP, E-Business Applications and Strategies - also wrote the quote of the week for this week:

"Saying Web services will eliminate complex integration is like saying that a grammar book plus a telephone line will solve universal communication. While Web services provide a means to connect different application components and share data in common formats, they do nothing to standardize the context of business transactions, such as orders, service request, or customer interactions."

http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=3541

Reuters may buy out Instinet minority shareholders

UK-based media and information group Reuters is said to be considering buying out minority shareholders and "taking back full control of its US-listed electronic share trading service", Instinet, reports the Financial Times (2 April 2002). Instinet shares (83% of which remain under Reuters' control) have fallen over 50% since their Nasdaq flotation in May 2001. According to the FT, Reuters sees a further long-term slide as an opportunity for buying Instinet back at about EU4.55 per share "for its cash alone". Instinet shares were trading at EU7.06 on 28 March (see also Infoconomy Media Eye, 28 March).

Sonic on Messaging, JMS and Web Services

http://www.messageq.com/communications_middleware/kuzyk_1.html Rick Kuzyk of SonicSoftware explains why popular existing messaging standards, such as JavaMessageService, offer a solid foundation for WebServices development.