VOSibilities

Have you ever wished you could sit back, pop open a beverage of choice and have a stimulating technical discussion about SOA, ESBs and the latest in enterprise application development with the leading experts driving these technologies? A talk with no marketing agenda…no sales pitch…a place to really learn something new without having to separate the chaff from the wheat?

Well, wait no longer. On Wednesday, 12 November, 2008, at 9am ET, 6am PT, 14:00 GMT, Active Endpoints and WSO2 are holding a live, free call-in and online chat conference at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/31357 in which their technical leaders will discuss the future of SOA development and take questions from attendees. TalkShoe allows people anywhere to participate in a group meeting using call-in phone on landlines or VoIP. Attendees can also use chat to participate in the group discussion. Active Endpoints and WSO2 are hosting this call-in as a way to bridge the gap between our software companies and our users because with today’s social networking technologies, the era of big, remote, you’ll-use-what-we-ship software is over.

Our guests will include:

• Paul Fremantle, CTO, WSO2
• Michael Rowley, Director of Strategy and Technology, Active Endpoints
• Luc Clement, Director of Product Management, Active Endpoints

These three distinguished technologists will discuss any number of topics, including:

• How Java developers can leverage their current skills in the new world of web services
• Why an open-source ESB is a fundamentally smart way to integrate many different services
• What, exactly, is “orchestration” and why do I care about it?

But the real beauty of this call-in show is that the discussion will go wherever the attendees take it. So, please join us with your questions at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/31357.

How to join a TalkShoe call-in:

Dial this number: +1 724 444 7444 (long distance and/or toll charges apply); then enter this call id when prompted: 31357, then the # key, OR

Go to http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/31357 15 minutes before the start time and a web chat client will automatically start, OR

For VoIP users:

a. Download and install TalkShoe Live Pro here: http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/tscmd/download/1 and search for call id 31357 OR
b. Use any SIP-standard softphone including Gizmo, SJphone, and X-Lite. Skype is not SIP-compliant but you can use SkypeOut to call 724-444-7444 (note: Skype charges for this). The address for Gizmo is 123@66.212.134.192; the address for SJphone and most other VoIP clients is 66.212.134.192.

Copied below is the text of an email we sent today to more than 30,000 developers in the US. We are in a unique position to see what the rate of adoption of modern development tools is. And what we’ve seen is so strong a trend, we simply had to go public with what we’ve learned. As always, we welcome any comments or feedback, either here on our blog or via email to editor@activevos.com.

Attention US developers: Active Endpoints has a wake-up call for you

Dear Developer,

We are emailing you because we are concerned about you.  We’ve learned something about the state of middleware technology in the US, its impact on outsourcing and US business competitiveness that we felt strongly we should share with you.

Since early March, we have been offering downloads of our new ActiveVOS visual orchestration system at www.activevos.com. With ActiveVOS, you can automate, control, adapt and manage your services-based applications in ways you never dreamed were possible. And, you do it in a 100%-standards based environment, at breakthrough pricing.

As you might imagine, we watch our download statistics very carefully…sometime hourly. We expected to have downloads from all over the world, but the shocking truth is that a majority of our downloads are coming from outside the US, especially from India and China. A conversation I had with a marketing director at a major open-source ESB provider confirmed that company is seeing fully half of its downloads from India and China.

At first, we couldn’t believe it. And we were surprised, because the US market for app dev products is several orders of magnitude larger than in these developing markets. Then, we started asking ourselves questions like “Why is this so pronounced a trend?” And “what do these developers, business analysts and companies know that US enterprises don’t?”

The answers are clear. US companies have become too caught up in the complexity of their current systems…too content to be dictated to by proprietary middleware vendors…too comfortable with their status quo. Meanwhile, companies without legacy issues – and without the temptation to use those issues as an excuse for stasis – adopt the most effective and modern middleware technologies rapidly.

Is it any wonder, then, that US developers are increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of change, the threat to their jobs, and the technical and political paralysis created by so-called enterprise architectures?

Clearly, we hope you will be the agent for change in your company and download ActiveVOS at www.activevos.com. We hope you will take advantage of our education center to update your skills. We hope you will join the hundreds of developers who have watched the replay of webinar we hosted called “BPEL for Java Developers.” (You can find it on our blog at www.vosibilities.com or in our podcast feed in the iTunes Store; search for “VOSibilities.”)

But mostly, we hope you will carefully consider the fact that the status quo in application development in your company is a very dangerous proposition. No matter how daunting change may seem, it’s better than the alternative: a world in which your company and you personally have been eclipsed by external competitors.

 

Thank you.

 

Alex Neihaus
VP Marketing
Active Endpoints, Inc.
editor@activevos.com