Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Father of WebSphere Leaves IBM For Microsoft

Posted by kdawson on from the moving-on dept.

jg21 writes ".NET Developer's Journal is reporting that Don Ferguson, the 'Father of WebSphere,' has left IBM to join Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie's office. Ozzie, whose efforts to rebuild Microsoft have been discussed previously on Slashdot, is gaining a man who while at Blue championed Web services, patterns, Web 2.0, and business-driven development — a potent combo for the future that Microsoft is trying to bring into being."

4 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not Surprised by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    As an anonymous coward inside IBM, yes, I can clearly tell you that morale is falling fast. Even my 3rd line manager has confessed he has no idea what is going on at the top levels of IBM, and its showing in everything we do.

    It might get turned around - there are a lot of good smart people here (and I work with WebSphere everyday), but every year being asked for 20% more, more regulation compliance load, and seeing bread-and-butter type work all go off-shore... it gets very disheartening. I doubt I will be here by this time next year, by my choice.

  2. Information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    For those who are unaware of what WebSphere is:

    WebSphere refers to a brand of proprietary IBM software products, although the term also popularly refers to one specific product: WebSphere Application Server (WAS). WebSphere helped define the middleware software category and is designed to set up, operate and integrate e-business applications across multiple computing platforms using Web technologies. It includes both the run-time components (like WAS) and the tools to develop applications that will run on WAS.


    Source
  3. Re:Websphere is crap by PCM2 · · Score: 2, Informative
    I've seen Websphere as its progressed from nothing more than an patched version of Tomcat with no support for EJB's all the way to 6.1 where it implements all kinds of support for web services and SOA implementations.

    What? WebSphere was never "a patched version of Tomcat." And to say the early versions had "no support for EJBs" is a little disingenuous, considering that the spec didn't exist yet -- not to mention that it was IBM that invented EJBs, not Sun.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  4. Re:Seriously: What's the big deal? by danheskett · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well.. ..I am not going to shill for IBM, because really, I've worked with the hairy mess that is WebSphere, and it's like everything from IBM - a lifestyle choice. You don't just recommend it like you would Zope or FoR.

    But in the end you buy software in this class for a few key reasons:

    1. Ability to interface directly with many platforms. (see #2)

    2. The ability to write software that runs on many platforms. And I don't mean Linux or Windows when I say platforms, I mean like mainframe, mini, datacenter, server, etc.

    3. The ability to write really big systems.

    When I mean really big, I am saying, you know like supporting an e-commerce website with 80,000 http request per second. They are rare, but they are out there. Although the core of the product is IBM HTTP Server, which is a fork of Apache, the key is in the tuning.

    Here is the test I recommend when people ask me about it: can you run a query against your live database to determine orders/transactions placed today?

    If you can, than don't worry about Websphere or middleware at all. You are fine. Your site or app is still "small" (not a perjorative).

    If you can't, than it means you probably have a big system. And maybe you need middleware.