On Mar 3, 2006, at 12:41 AM, Timothy Sipples wrote:
About mainframe software vendor consolidation: it's gotten more
interesting. There's a pretty strong argument that vendor
consolidation
was the *only* trend until about 5 or 6 years ago. But then a few
things
happened. One is that IBM entered the tools/utilities software
business
and went from roughly zero percent marketshare to a big (biggest?)
player
in half a decade. That shook up the market profoundly, injecting
competition and choice, and I would argue it's a good thing for
everyone,
including ISVs. ISVs have (very) lately been innovating again, waking
from a slumber, and earning profits the old fashioned way:
delivering new
customer value. To those ISVs innovating again: thank you!
There's the fact that consolidation really cannot proceed much more
due to
simple mathematics. Candle was probably the last big acquisition
that's
possible.
We're starting to see some new ISVs now, particularly in the "new
workload" and application categories, and that's very exciting.
Some are
brand new companies, and some are existing companies entering (or more
aggressively entering) the mainframe software market. One example
of a
"new" ISV is Velocity Software which has built a new and
significant z/VM
and Linux monitoring business.
And the "mountain" has moved, too, with the superior J2EE and Linux
capabilities of the mainframe. Companies like Oracle are doing brisk
business helping their customers consolidate scores of small databases
onto their mainframe Linux product, for example, increasing their
mainframe revenues. And, in one interesting twist, Wily Technology
sells
J2EE monitoring technology to some mainframe customers resulting in
the
company's acquisition by CA.
I'm struggling to come up with a one-word name for what's going on
right
now. Maybe "consolipansion"? Or "expansidation"? :-)
[Speaking for myself, not IBM. Does a corporation really "speak"
anyway?
I'm not sure.]
Tim:
IMO the one thing IBM did to the ISV's that hurt the worst was COBOL
(and LE). Most ISV's won't even talk with you about problems if you
recompile their source with the current COBOL. and demand that you
use *THEIR* coblib for linking.
Ed
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