Contributors: Dan Baer, Chris Blandino, Karl Fisher, Greg Kreis, James Allen Self, Gardner S. Trask, and an anonymous MSM user from New Zealand (with editorial assistance from Kate Schell)
The largest topic on comp.lang.mumps this month has been the InterSystems acquisition of Micronetics' assets. There have been multiple threads dealing with the topic:
The following posts and excerpts are pretty much in chronological order
Dan Baer: What's the future????
It's a logical move for InterSystems. Why not dominate your market? Eliminate your greatest competitor and your market share increases dramatically overnight.
Seems like Micronetics should have gone public and used the capital to increase their market share, or perhaps to have purchased Greystone.
Will the small, independent M developer be forgotten about, unable to bring inexpensive, M-based products to the general computing marketplace (COTS & shareware)? If InterSystems abandons the MSM systems (like they did with DTM), and don't redesign Caché so it has an extremely small footprint (like MSM-Workstation gives us), small developers will have no way to use M for their products. They'll be forced to use alternative technologies. Is M now headed for just large, corporate installations with licensing prohibitively high? Will developers be able to continue to create and distribute royalty free M applications?
What about M? Who knows. Maybe a new company will be founded with the personnel that have been displaced and customers that may be forgotten about. Maybe there's an M that would be developed and supported by the community like LINUX. Or maybe Microsoft comes in with their own M system. Or an even greater possibility, after InterSystems locks in the M market, InterSystems is bought out by Microsoft so MS can have a strong foothold in healthcare information systems.
Dan Baer: What's the future????
As an independent developer that has released products that use M to customers that don't even know about M, I am a bit nervous. I was forced to move from InterSystems DTM to MSM since DTM would not work under NT with their Visual M server. This was a few years back, and as far as I know, that is still the way DTM is. To me, this shows that IS has placed their greatest portion of development on Caché and has let other systems stagnate and forced me, as a customer, to use their competitor's solution. As an independent developer, this makes me wonder if I'll be able to count on InterSystems for my development needs. So far, they still do not have a solution for my use.
So, as M developers and users, we have some things that make us nervous. Whether or not this was a good move for us, only time will tell. For InterSystems, it was their obvious move. If InterSystems is successful in positioning their Caché product as an Oracle/Sybase killer, then it may be a very positive thing for the M community (if there's an "M" community left).
James Allen Self: MTA Meeting Status
Everyone here is deeply concerned by InterSystems buyout of Micronetics and wondering what that means to plans for upgrading and expanding our systems and services. We are anxious to learn how this is interpreted by M people at the meeting and elsewhere.
Your <Ben Bishop's - ed.> notes confirm my feeling that InterSystems is focused strongly on non-M users to the point that they hardly see us any more.
Although development directions in the VMTH are not immediately affected, since we are building on Netscape, Javascript, and Java on the front end and still have quite a bit of room for intranet growth with DTM on the back end, it seems that our options for low-cost expansion and development of medium and large-scale systems in M have been suddenly reduced so that we must seriously consider alternatives.
I am particularly interested in Open Source projects and products, such as LINUX and Apache, and the possibilities of an Open Source M. Is it possible for the GUM project or something like it to produce a MUMPS that could reliably support an HIS? (see article beginning on page [] for more information on GUM.)
I had been planning to install a test bed MSM-Server here but that seems to be a dead end now.
Chris Blandino: Message from InterSystems
I don't think that the MDC appeared to be having too much effect on InterSystems anyway. They had already developed products like Caché Objects and Caché SQL prior to the Micronetics purchase. As far as I'm concerned I think this acquisition will ultimately be a good thing for a number of reasons:
1. There are tons of new cool things happening in Mumps, but until now I've been unable to really use them because they weren't how the "other" vendor might have implemented them (read: nonstandard).
2. The competition hasn't been eliminated-it has just changed. Instead of Micronetics, its now Oracle, Sybase, Informix, etc. To be honest, these companies offer SERIOUS competition which should really help to advance InterSystems' product line as far as features go.
3. If InterSystems is smart, they aren't going to force us all to use Caché-Objects or Caché SQL, but will instead allow us to continue to use native M (Caché Direct). After all, this should help to differentiate InterSystems' products from their new competition and is after all what most of us need to do for the majority of our work. Certainly if they did force us to do this we would all be forced to consider alternatives like Informix, Oracle, etc-and they certainly don't want us to do that.
4. Most M customers weren't actively participating in the MDC, and now InterSystems won't be limited by their guidelines . . . they are a business like any other and should be reacting to the needs of their customers anyway- if they don't they won't have any customers.
5. M as a language hasn't really evolved that significantly as an ANSI standard language anyway. OK, OK- we got the merge command and the somewhat cumbersome MWAPI which was never fully implemented by InterSystems anyway. I remember an InterSystems conference where Paul Grabsheid said that after they had poured a lot of time and effort into implementing MWAPI, it turned out no one wanted to use it-hence the development of Visual M.
This situation really isn't that different from any other out there in the marketplace. Microsoft owns SQL Server and Visual Basic (I hate to think where VB might be today if it had to wait for a standards body to approve every change). Sybase and Powerbuilder are owned by one company, as are Oracle, Informix, etc. Even languages like C aren't really that portable (i.e., if you write C code for an MS Windows environment using the MFC it ain't gonna run on a UNIX box or a MAC). In some ways I think we've missed out on a lot of cool things because we've been tied to the ANSI standard as the lowest common denominator.
Karl Fisher: The new American dream
Database programming is a business. Companies do what is in their on best interests. You can either continue to cry a river of tears about the "good old days," "the American dream," and "apple pie" or you can concentrate on doing what is going to make you and your organization successful. I guarantee that is what InterSystems is doing.
Its an old statement, but true. The only thing that is constant is change. Those that are successful are those that embrace the change and look for areas to expand. Not those that complain about what could have/should have been.
msm4me@hotmail.com: The new American dream
Some of us actually chose to use M and chose to be a Micronetics customer for various reasons. I chose to be a Micronetics customer because of their products and service, and I object to being sold off to what I consider to be a lesser company with inferior products-for my needs. Caché may well be a serviceable product, but I don't want a 50+ Mb install. MSM was the product that suited "my" needs and did it very well indeed. Now that has all ended.
MSM user
N.Z.
Dan Baer: MSM-WS > Caché?
I have no idea what IS plans on doing with MSM-Workstation. It would seem to be a pity to abandon it. It was just getting to be a good product, not only for M developers, but for the M community in general. We really needed a product that could be released to the general programming community, not just M programmers. MSM-WS was going to allow us to try to get non-M developers interested in exploring M. But now, if it is an abandoned product, I wouldn't feel comfortable talking about MSM-WS with developers.
I'm waiting for some response from InterSystems. I emailed their MSM hot line and requested that they attend our MUG's July meeting. I haven't had a response yet. Maybe I'll have to call.
Greg Kreis: Micronetics
I will miss the FANTASTIC Micronetics web site. The webmaster they contracted with is AWESOME. Her creativity and graphics quality are some of the best I have seen anywhere on the net.
Although it is hard to see this happen to the M community, maybe it will indeed give InterSystems the "critical mass," as they mentioned, to make a much greater dent in database sales around the world. I hope they are extremely successful so our M skills will be of greater and greater value.
Chris Blandino: DTM to Caché Conversion
Rod Dorman wrote:
>You *HAVE* been coding in Standard Mumps and avoided using implementation
specific functionality haven't you?
Man, that last statement is one I hope I don't have to hear too much now that InterSystems has acquired Micronetics. I have always hated the fact that I couldn't use some cool feature in one vendor's implementation because it hadn't made it into the ancient standard! Standards bodies shouldn't drive product development, customer needs should. Gardner S. Trask III: DTM to Caché Conversion The great thing about the standard, the thing most people forget, is that it allows for vendor extensibility, but in a standard way. There were conventions to allow any command, any functionality a vendor could think up, and have it implemented in a way that would not crush legacy code. If InterSystems wanted to make blue toaster oven interfaces, no problem. And then, if it was well received and adopted, it could very well become part of the ANSI standard language. Never in a million years would I believe DataTree or Digital or Micronetics or Greystone or InterSystems ever sit around on their respective hands and wait for a standard to come out.
Chris Blandino: DTM to Caché Conversion
To be honest I don't want to sit around and think up all the things that might be good for the language, sometimes it's nice to be surprised by what an ingenious vendor can come up with to help make a product more attractive and give themselves an edge in the market. After all if everyone had Caché Objects or some other specific feature, it certainly doesn't give the company developing it any kind of edge (or incentive to develop it in the first place).
Gardner S. Trask III: DTM to Caché Conversion
I agree. However, I want the pool of ideas to come from a host of companies (vendors and users) all looking at this with different views and mindsets. Each perspective adds to the final solution. I encourage competition and free thinking. The standards body (of which I am not one) did not drag the process, and one vendor will not save it.
| Dan Baer | mtrc@mcenter.com dan@mtrc |
| Chris Blandino | questdgx@questdiagnositics.com |
| Karl Fisher | fisher@cowboy.biomed.com |
| Greg Kreis | gkreis@mindspring.com |
| James Self | jaself@ucdavis.edu |
| Gardner S. Trask III | trask@mediaone.net |
Kate Schell