Oh man... Larry Ellison just bought Sun.
Zoinks!
Well, if it's one thing Oracle knows how to do - that's monetize their software assets. He gets to kill off MySQL and "own" Java all in one fell swoop - for about the price that's a steal - $5.9 billion.
What will happen to MySQL and Java and Solaris and JavaFX and all the other Intellectual Property of Sun? Only Larry knows for sure... but I bet there are some people in Aramonk, New York that are absolutely kicking themselves that they didn't take a man pill and try harder to secure the Sun acquisition.
Now IBM is in the delicate position of having their #1 rival own the language (Java) that it has based it's whole company and infrastructure on... NICE!
Will this mean an end to MySQL?
Will Oracle start demanding some kind of licensing for Java?
Will they splinter the Java core into their own "brand" of Java?
Now that Oracle's in the hardware business - what does that mean for customers? For HP? For IBM?
It's sure going to be Mr. Toad's wild ride as Oracle assimilates the company... wow! My hat's off to Mr. Ellison - you've really pulled off a shocker!
Showing posts with label JavaFX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JavaFX. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2009
Monday, January 05, 2009
2009 Outlook: Cloud-y
Just as the world was learning about, creating a strategy for, and releasing 1,000 different tools for "Cloud Computing" in 2008 - I predict we'll see more of it in 2009.
Certainly, all the "big" players have announced their strategies - Google, Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Sun, etc. - but so far, the thing that's really lacking is some kind of cohesive standard or at least even parity with one another. The big problem is that everyone is convinced they have the "perfect" platform for cloud computing.
I'm sure in their minds they do. They've spent a lot of time and money figuring out how their offering would get some traction in the marketplace and, most importantly of all, gain developer mind share and get people who will actually use it.
They are so vastly different in the way they define things - from Google and their Gears product to Adobe and the Flex/Flash combo to Microsoft's Mesh. It's sort of all over the place.
Some take the approach that they'll just be the host (Amazon), some want to help enable online/offline browser-based apps (Google, Adobe), others think that the platform IS the platform (Microsoft, Salesforce) - and still, no one has come up with a way to actually build and deploy browser-based application in an easy, repeatable, flexible and seamless way (unless of course you count Servoy).
I think we'll see some great improvements in the tool sets and the capabilities of "cloud" vendors. It's just too much of a cluster to try to create (D)HTML and JavaScript applications that run on a server and also on your machine (not to mention all the "moving parts" required. End users want flexibility. Developers want standards-based stuff they can re-use their current skill set with. Bean counters want everything to be free or cheap.
So I think 2009 will continue to be a year of convergence, and in a down economy (at least until Q4) - the pressure of having to do more with less could either help cloud vendors or it might just backfire and cause developers to retreat into "what they know" in order to preserve their jobs.
Only time will tell.
Certainly, all the "big" players have announced their strategies - Google, Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Sun, etc. - but so far, the thing that's really lacking is some kind of cohesive standard or at least even parity with one another. The big problem is that everyone is convinced they have the "perfect" platform for cloud computing.
I'm sure in their minds they do. They've spent a lot of time and money figuring out how their offering would get some traction in the marketplace and, most importantly of all, gain developer mind share and get people who will actually use it.
They are so vastly different in the way they define things - from Google and their Gears product to Adobe and the Flex/Flash combo to Microsoft's Mesh. It's sort of all over the place.
Some take the approach that they'll just be the host (Amazon), some want to help enable online/offline browser-based apps (Google, Adobe), others think that the platform IS the platform (Microsoft, Salesforce) - and still, no one has come up with a way to actually build and deploy browser-based application in an easy, repeatable, flexible and seamless way (unless of course you count Servoy).
I think we'll see some great improvements in the tool sets and the capabilities of "cloud" vendors. It's just too much of a cluster to try to create (D)HTML and JavaScript applications that run on a server and also on your machine (not to mention all the "moving parts" required. End users want flexibility. Developers want standards-based stuff they can re-use their current skill set with. Bean counters want everything to be free or cheap.
So I think 2009 will continue to be a year of convergence, and in a down economy (at least until Q4) - the pressure of having to do more with less could either help cloud vendors or it might just backfire and cause developers to retreat into "what they know" in order to preserve their jobs.
Only time will tell.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Sun Breaking Through The PaaS Cloud
It looks like Sun is putting together a cloud offering to compete with the likes of force.com, Amazon EC2, Microsoft's Live Mesh and all the other folks to strive to provide a PaaS (Platform as a Service) stack in the cloud.
At their JavaOne conference they announced an imitative they've code-named "hydrazine" (a highly flammable rocket fuel!). Robert Brewin, Sun Chief Technology Officer and Distinguished Engineer, described Hydrazine as a combination of Amazon’s Elastic Cloud, Microsoft’s Live Mesh and Google Analytics all rolled into one.
They envision JavaFX to be the GUI glue that holds the stuff together. Which is interesting - given that it's not shipping Sun has already got the domain going - and has a pretty good description of it on their site.
The basic idea of hydrazine is that Sun is building a set of common services (discovery, personalization, deployment, location, content delivery and developer) that will allow developers to hook into when they are building Java applications (both J2EE and J2SE).
But the vision isn't to just stop there. There will be (according to Sun) another layer that contains services for advertising, a market place, developer hosting and repository services, and more.
It looks like Sun is trying to create a flexible PaaS repository that utilizes all of their assets (Java, Solaris, Sun hardware, MySQL, JavaFX).
My thoughts on all of this? Much like JavaFX - it will sure be interesting to see if they can pull it off. Because just like Microsoft's Live Mesh stuff - it's all just a slide show and YouTube video at this point.
So this whole PaaS movement is really getting some legs - and everyone seems to be wanting to make sure that their tools and stack is represented. Assuming it's all going work - and developers will actually use the stuff - it may mean the beginning of the end of the data center for SMB and SME customers.
It will certainly be fun to watch!
At their JavaOne conference they announced an imitative they've code-named "hydrazine" (a highly flammable rocket fuel!). Robert Brewin, Sun Chief Technology Officer and Distinguished Engineer, described Hydrazine as a combination of Amazon’s Elastic Cloud, Microsoft’s Live Mesh and Google Analytics all rolled into one.
They envision JavaFX to be the GUI glue that holds the stuff together. Which is interesting - given that it's not shipping Sun has already got the domain going - and has a pretty good description of it on their site.
The basic idea of hydrazine is that Sun is building a set of common services (discovery, personalization, deployment, location, content delivery and developer) that will allow developers to hook into when they are building Java applications (both J2EE and J2SE).
But the vision isn't to just stop there. There will be (according to Sun) another layer that contains services for advertising, a market place, developer hosting and repository services, and more.
It looks like Sun is trying to create a flexible PaaS repository that utilizes all of their assets (Java, Solaris, Sun hardware, MySQL, JavaFX).
My thoughts on all of this? Much like JavaFX - it will sure be interesting to see if they can pull it off. Because just like Microsoft's Live Mesh stuff - it's all just a slide show and YouTube video at this point.
So this whole PaaS movement is really getting some legs - and everyone seems to be wanting to make sure that their tools and stack is represented. Assuming it's all going work - and developers will actually use the stuff - it may mean the beginning of the end of the data center for SMB and SME customers.
It will certainly be fun to watch!
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Sun Shows Flocked Up Demo of JavaFX
Yesterday at their 13th annual JavaOne Conference - Sun announced a new, ambitious plan for JavaFX - their answer to Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight and plan ol' AJAX.
Param Singh, senior director of Java marketing (and ex-Apple dude), apparently showed a demo (which had to be restarted twice) that took Facebook and Flickr pictures and applied a "flocking algorithm" (no, I'm not making this up).
When you enter a person's name all the pictures that have to do with that person "flocked" together out of a slowly moving mass of pictures moving on the screen. He then showed how pictures with similar colors could flock, etc.
The plan is to also allow the user to drag a app that is downloaded into the browser to their desktop to run without a connection to the Internet.
JavaFX will have a scripting language - not Java, not JavaScript, but that tried-and-true, non-standards based, Adobe-inspired ActionScript! Yeah!
Not.
Plus, at least initially, users will have to install a browser plug-in until the JavaFX stuff makes it into the standard builds of the JVM (Java Virtual Machine).
Oh, and they're planning on bringing this to mobile devices in the fall of 2009.
By now you've probably guessed my take on this - "Oh goodie - yet ANOTHER damn, half-baked, me-too, non-standards-based, piece of crap just to muddy the waters of an already clouded pond filled with the refuse and lack of interoperability between competing companies trying to get developer mind share and application lock-in."
And, ordinarily, you'd be right.
But for this one, I'm going to take a wait and see approach. I'm interested to see what kind of back end programmatic, Java-linking, server-based goodies MIGHT be in there. It all depends on the execution - how quickly they can get it out in the wild (rumored to be "this fall") and whether it can perform as hyped.
We'll see..
Param Singh, senior director of Java marketing (and ex-Apple dude), apparently showed a demo (which had to be restarted twice) that took Facebook and Flickr pictures and applied a "flocking algorithm" (no, I'm not making this up).
When you enter a person's name all the pictures that have to do with that person "flocked" together out of a slowly moving mass of pictures moving on the screen. He then showed how pictures with similar colors could flock, etc.
The plan is to also allow the user to drag a app that is downloaded into the browser to their desktop to run without a connection to the Internet.
JavaFX will have a scripting language - not Java, not JavaScript, but that tried-and-true, non-standards based, Adobe-inspired ActionScript! Yeah!
Not.
Plus, at least initially, users will have to install a browser plug-in until the JavaFX stuff makes it into the standard builds of the JVM (Java Virtual Machine).
Oh, and they're planning on bringing this to mobile devices in the fall of 2009.
By now you've probably guessed my take on this - "Oh goodie - yet ANOTHER damn, half-baked, me-too, non-standards-based, piece of crap just to muddy the waters of an already clouded pond filled with the refuse and lack of interoperability between competing companies trying to get developer mind share and application lock-in."
And, ordinarily, you'd be right.
But for this one, I'm going to take a wait and see approach. I'm interested to see what kind of back end programmatic, Java-linking, server-based goodies MIGHT be in there. It all depends on the execution - how quickly they can get it out in the wild (rumored to be "this fall") and whether it can perform as hyped.
We'll see..
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