Progress Software acquires Iona--good luck

The Iona acquisition rumors have been flying for months, and now we know the winner (loser?) of the prized pig: Progress Software. This is a not a bad purchase for Progress, which does a lot of business in legacy application integration. Iona's CORBA products are good and fit into the Progress customer base. What they'll do with 3 of the same products (Artix, Sonic, and Servicemix) I have no idea.

Having dealt with Iona personally over the last two years as they have "participated" in the open-source community I can say that I am very pleased that the company is being taken out. For all their open-source positing, Iona has been divisive in the community and clouded the market with FUD. I don't see how or why Progress would continue with the open-source efforts, which haven't been particularly lucrative.

From the competitive standpoint I can't point to a single account where Mule has lost to Iona or Progress (though I am sure they exist) in our multithousand user base. Now the odds are even lower.

I tend to be fairly low-key on this blog (and in public) about my company's complete and total domination, whereas these third-tier players like Iona blather on and flail. These guys and others like them are just noise.

My targets remain Tibco, BEA, Oracle, IBM, and so on. If you are an open-source company and your goal is to beat other open-source companies then you are destined to fail. The economics of re-attacking a market that is shrunk by open-source pricing simply don't work.

As a great man said in the movie There Will Be Blood, I drink your milkshake.

[Mollyfud]

"From the competitive standpoint I can't point to a single account where Mule has lost to Iona or Progress"
Interesting point. That either means you are so much better then those products or more like so much more irrelevent! As Sonic (the ESB side of Progress) is the origiator of the term, I am sorry, but I seem to think it is the later!
Molly

[daverosenberg]

Thanks Molly. You are doing a great job in your work for Iona! Nice mispellings for authenticity.

[cameronpurdy]

Dave, regarding your statement: "I tend to be fairly low-key on this blog (and in public) about my company's complete and total domination, whereas these third-tier players like Iona blather on and flail. These guys and others like them are just noise."

I think you could learn a lot from someone like Ross Mason (founder of Mule), who communicates (even with competitors) with both humility and respect.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Oracle

[daverosenberg]

Yeah, thanks. Ross and I are the founders.

[daverosenberg]

Do I know you? Are you offering to introduce me to Ross?

[Matt Asay]

Dave, I can introduce you to Ross, if you need. I went skiing with him this past winter. He really is a gentleman. You, on the other hand, are Angus Young to his Lars Ulrich. :-)

[antileader]

Low key and Dave are two opposite ends of the spectrum. Usually, the people who have nothing to really contribute are the loudest yellers in the crowd. Ross is a gentleman, an educated and polite person, that has the respect of everyone in the industry, competitors and colleagues alike.

CMO time? fuhgeddaboudit!

[daverosenberg]

It's great that all these comments come from people who don't actually read this blog. All of you who think you know everything should be a little more realistic. It takes a lot of guts to post anonymously

[Carlos_Martin]

hey Dave. Regarding your comment: "... about my company's complete and total domination, whereas these third-tier players like Iona blather on and flail."

You talking about flailing is just too much to bare. Dave, flailing at Mule = TURNOVER (as in extremely HIGH); MORALE (as in extremely LOW); EXECUTION (as in VERY POOR ... see turnover and morale); LEADERSHIP (need I state the obvious ... see turnover and morale again).

I have never been as keenly aware of the 'negative approach' as it relates to a company's culture, but I thank you for the invaluable lesson, Dave. Flail On .. Flail On!!!

-- Charlie

[Matt Asay]

A bit low, Charlie. I know you and Dave didn't work things through but it's not worthy of you to come to the blog to take swings at Dave. IONA was a bit slimy in how it worked with its "open source partners." You know it. I know it. Dave said it.

[mauriciocanales]

IONA slimy? A VP of another company in a totally different market space calling another company slimy? Please clarify something for us:
1 - what IONA did that you considered slimy
2 - how many options or shares have you been granted to be an "adviser" to MuleSource?

[daverosenberg]

@Mauricio--I will give you all the details, just not publicly for legal reasons. My phone is 415-229-2012.

[daverosenberg]

@Charlie--Thanks for your continued support!

[daverosenberg]

One more comment here...I don't really know who most of you are and you are welcome to criticize me all you want. You should recognize though that I was talking about Iona here but whatever, I stand by comments.

[jinchun]

not that it would happen (although I've asked to no avail), if Progress combines the sonicmq and activemq teams, open sources it and puts support around it (why not, the ones paying the licenses now will continue anyway, except we'll have more developers in the field who get more surface contact with messaging products that work without having to have a full time admin on staff), _and_ starts down the same path with their ESB/ServiceMix product, then things get interesting.