End of the Empire-Sun is Acquired
May 2009
I guess there's nothing new about big companies gobbling up smaller ones, but I have to say that the recent Sun acquisition by Oracle feels like the end of an era. I've been around long enough to have worked on Sun pizza boxes running Solaris when the rest of the IT community was using minicomputers. And I clearly remember the ascent of Java, my own experience starting with the Beta JDK 1.02 doing GUI Java widgets back in the days of the AWT.
When I think of recent events, the thought that comes to mind is "End of Empire". No one can predict what will happen to Java, mySQL, and all the other great stuff that has come from Sun. But, I'm sure Open Source will prevail, and at any rate, change is always slow--at least under the watch of a behemoth like Oracle.
In contrast, I have to say that working in a start-up, change is anything but slow. Symplified has been leading the SaaS revolution, and it's an exciting place to be. When I look around at the established (dare I say "legacy") IdM companies, I feel that their purported strengths have become their weaknesses. Overblown feature sets and product families that are complex enough to make CIOs reel are not what enterprises need today. High integration costs, elongated deployment timeframes, and high project failure rates are not the characteristics of technology I would recommend to my CIO. But I understand that once invested in a technology, and the code base that drives it, an earlier generation technology provider is challenged to make radical changes to compete with new contenders and adapt to paradigm shifts (like Cloud Computing).
In closing, I am proud to announce Symplified's nomination for the 2009 Apex Awards, the prestigious technology awards recognizing outstanding accomplishments and leadership by Colorado's advanced technology companies and professionals. Honestly, it's hard to say which criteria is our strongest area as we have done well in all: Innovation, Vision, Strategy, Performance, Leadership, Culture, and Corporate Responsibility. So as the big get bigger, I know that the great get greater, and look forward to an exciting third and fourth quarter providing Cloud Security.
Coby Royer
Technical Product Manager
Symplified | The Cloud Security Company