Father of WebSphere Leaves IBM For Microsoft

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."

I don't see why he wouldn't want to

[melted]

Folks at near-VP level get $1M a year in just stock grants. That's not your daddy's options, real stock is given to these folks. Sure it vests over 5 year period, but you get a ton of it every year. I think he'll be one of those rest-and-vest types. Which is perfectly fine by Microsoft if that's the price to pay to decapitate a competitor. There are exceptions to this rule, though, most notably Anders Hejlsberg. But back when he joined there weren't any $1M a year stock payouts, and to be fair, he's worth it.

Re:Information

[Anonymous Coward]

Websphere is far more than WAS (Websphere Application Server)
Two of the main probuts under this brand are
1) Websphere MQ (formerly MQSeries) - The defacto standard for Messaging Middleware
2) Websphere Message Broker - Does Message Transformation, Content based message routing and far more.
  (The Wimbledon Tennis scores is IMHO a big Broker Publish & Subscribe System)

  I can understand some of the problems at IBM. I work for a Websphere Business Partner and from the Global Services people I meet, there is some low morale. This actually makes it easier for me to do business (irony here)

There are many overlapping products in this Brand and there should be some merging of duplicate functionality ASAP. Just trying to select the right product is an onerous task.

Still, IBM are far better a company to deal with than ever Microsoft ever has been and don't even let me start about Oracle. I can sell everything from H/W to Application Software and Training, topped off with counsultancy and bespoke software with real support from the supplier. My company is also a M$ Business Partner and their support is laughable by comparison.

I don't know what sort of job Don has been hired to do at M$ but as far as I am concerned, their Field Operations (at M$) need wholsale surgery. They are only noticeable by their total absence. Get your people out of their comfy chairs (no balmerisms here) and into the real world

If it is in the Product World then for pity's sake kill off Biztalk. no matter how the M$ politicians(sorry salespeople) spin it, it can't compete with MQ and it only runs on Windows. The Middleware arena is a multiplatform marketplace. It is also a pure CPU hog and there is no one at M$ who knows how to make it work half decently. I shudder everey time I have to work on a system that uses this monstrosity. WAS is a dream by comparison and I'm no Java Fanboy (I prefer C/C++ and that shows my age)

Overall, the Majority of Websphere products "Works as it says on the Tin" which IMHO is not the case for the M$ Stuff I have to try to sell.

smart people and google

[Anonymous Coward]

It is funny how people assume that Google employees are smart. I suppose it has to do with the type of (supposely hard) interviews they perform. Let me tell you, I did an internship in Google, and the people was like in any other place. There were smart people and there were incompetent people. In fact, one of the things that surprised me at Google was that people was just average, once you have taken off the layer of arrogance and condescendence. As you may know, Google is not interested in making technical questions. They also disregard all your previous experience. They are only interested in making algorithm and puzzle questions. Most of those who pass those interviews (like I did) just trained for it hard enough (and had a few months to spare waiting in between interviews). Even if your brain fits very well those type of questions and you can answer them without studying, it does not mean you are going to perform well at your job.

Re:Nebulous Terminolgy

[Gr8Apes]

Defintely! Websphere's an ok appserver. It'll run fine, but the clustering is subpar, BEA's Weblogic has a much better performing clustering solution. So does Resin, which sells the commercial enterprise version for something like a $500 license. Actually, I've only cursorily examined Resin, but it appears from the documentation to follow the designated in-memory replication approach used by the best BEA solution, which has 5 different approaches to clustering, only 2 of which scale well, and only the in-memory one that scales transparently.

As long as you don't use proprietary components, you shouldn't care what appserver you run on. Write to the spec, develop on whatever you want, then deploy and test to Websphere. It's a much better and faster running solution, and keeps you honest.