BEA has released version 1.0 of Pages, Ensemble and Pathways (formerly known as projects Builder, Runner and Graffiti)!
This marks BEA’s first foray into Enterprise 2.0. Watch this space for more information about and reviews of these exciting new products!
Off The Record Research, a subscription-based Wall Street publication, recently prepared a research brief on BEA that was released to their customers on May 9th. Although I can’t post the entire article here (as it’s for paying customers only), I will say that I was quoted twice in the research brief. Here’s what I said:
[BEA’s] AquaLogic is different from a lot of the products in this space. IBM [Corp.], Microsoft [Corp.] and SAP [AG] require you to buy the whole suite. BEA with AquaLogic is more agnostic. [The other vendors’ products] break down [in a heterogeneous environment].
Later in the article, I mentioned BID’s new development efforts, to which those in the know are know calling PEP (for Pages, Ensemble and Pathways):
[BEA AquaLogic’s] Ensemble, Pages and Pathways are going to change the world. BEA is doing it again with Web 2.0, with community-centric software. We need to do this for the enterprise. They are cracking open a whole new market.
Last week I had the pleasure of being interviewed by former Plumtreevian and soon-to-be-graduate of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, John Osborne. Following the interview, he submitted this great write-up, which I have posted below. Enjoy!
Chris Bucchere grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied computer science at Stanford University. After graduating from college, he spent five years working for Plumtree Software as a developer and implementation consultant focusing on integration and customization projects at customer sites. In 2002, he founded Bucchere Development Group (BDG), an independent consulting organization focused on helping Plumtree customers with implementation, integration, and training. BDG operates out of the DC Metro Area and San Francisco. This past week, I talked with Chris about how he identified his market and got his company running.
How did you identify the market? And get your first customer?
Chris commented that he didn’t put forth a lot of thought toward identifying the market. He had just quit his job and was moving to Washington, DC. He started calling all customer contacts he had worked with while at Plumtree. Since Plumtree had more consulting work than it could manage, a number of customers asked Chris to fill in the gaps. Chris signed on to do a six month engagement at Merck in the UK.
How did you fund BDG?
Chris leveraged the money he earned consulting for Merck to get BDG officially up and running. He structured the firm as an LLC, hired an operations manager and another consultant. Since that time, BDG has generally been able to fund itself through revenue. In times of greater financing need, Chris has turned to credit cards which—when exploited properly—can offer a low 1% interest rate.
Chris also noted that customer funding is emerging as an interesting source of capital. At the moment, one of his customers is providing the funding for a custom add-on. The customer wants the add-on themselves, but also wants BDG to be able to resell the product to other customers.
What do you do to ensure continued growth?
One of Chris’ major growth opportunities came serendipitously when BEA Systems acquired Plumtree Software. Chris quickly ramped-up on the BEA suite and became a consulting partner. Being a BEA partner opened up more potential customers and projects. Now BDG is a value-added reseller for BEA, a position that provides BDG a new channel for income. At the moment, BDG employs seven full-time staff to meet it customer obligations.
How do you drive new business?
BDG has released a number of small products as open source. This strategy has help generate new consulting engagements and get the firm name out. BDG is also considering developing more closed source add-ons which it can sell to existing customers.
What were the biggest challenges, and what would you do differently now?
Chris identified staffing as his single biggest challenge. He commented, “For me, staffing is harder than selling new business.” Chris struggled to find seasoned consultants. He therefore turned to college campuses. BDG recruits new college graduates and then runs them through its own six month training program, leveraging the same training materials it sells to customers.
Generally, what characteristics make entrepreneurs different?
Chris echoed the conventional wisdom about entrepreneurship. In short, folks who want to start new enterprises need to be self-confident and passionate about their work. And, above all, they need to be willing to take risks.
bdg just turned four! To celebrate the beginning of year five, we’ve launched a new web site. It’s all about how bdg, given our background of providing high-end Plumtree/ALUI consulting, development and training, is now ready to take on Enterprise 2.0.
There’s also a new slogan to go with our new web site and blog: the bdg way.
For the geeks who are reading this, we built our new web site in Ruby on Rails, which explains the elegant friendly URLs. We also built a simple Rails-driven CMS behind the site, so you should see updates more often now that it’s easy breezy to make changes.
Meet the new bdg and read all about enterprise 2.0, the bdg way on www.thebdgway.com.
It’s here: The little integration kit that could change the world. Thanks to the efforts of hotshot bdg developer Andrew Bays, the Ruby IDK is now rockin’ on BEA’s dev2dev CodeShare. Visit the project at https://rubyidk.projects.dev2dev.bea.com and start a discussion thread if you like.
Like all the best things in life, the Ruby IDK is free. It comes as a Rails project, so just unzip it and type ruby script/server and off you go developing Ruby/Rails portlets to your heart’s content. Enjoy!
Check it out at https://rubyidk.projects.dev2dev.bea.com.
Let’s have a virtual round of applause for Andrew Bays, bdg’s hotshot developer responsible for the latest innovation to come from our open source factory, the Ruby IDK.
Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first)
Posted by: jonmountjoy on October 13, 2006 at 2:15 AM
<!-- This example sets the portlet's title bar -->
<% @portletResponse.setTitle("My Awesome Portlet") %>
<!-- This example greets the user -->
Hello, <%= @portletUser.getUserName() %>!
<!-- This example redirects the browser to the portal home page -->
<% @portletResponse.returnToPortal() %>
<!-- This example creates a link back to the portal home page -->
<a href=">%= @portletRequest.getReturnURI() %>">%= @portletRequest.getReturnURI() %>"</a>
!-- This example shows how to force a portlet displayed outside of a portal page to use the ALUI header and footer -->
<% @portletResponse.setHostedDisplayMode(HostedDisplayMode.Hosted) %>
I hope you find this useful and at least somewhat informative. I would stress that you examine the sample portlets provided in CodeShare’s rubyidk.zip for a more thorough presentation of the IDK’s potential.
Regards,
Andrew Bays | bdg | 607 316 3090
[email protected] | http://www.bdg-online.com
Posted by: andrew.bays on October 20, 2006 at 11:50 AM
We’ve laid down the basic architecture for the Ruby IDK 5.3 and written most of IPortletContext and IPortletRequest. We also now have a test bed application built in Rails, the output of which checks for CSP-Gateway-Type == 'Plumtree', displays your HTTP environment (dumps all the headers) and then proceeds to call each IDK method in IPortletRequest.
This is our first adventure in Ruby and I must say, it’s easy breezy. What a great language! And don’t get me started on how easy it is to prototype a web application with Rails using scaffolding. Makes J2EE seem almost neolithic.
It is with great pleasure that I ask you all to join me in welcoming our newest addition to the team, Andrew Bays.
Andrew will be starting this Friday, August 11th (should everything go well with his migration from upstate New York to the DC area). In keeping with the tradition of having our new college hires write EDKs/IDKs, Andrew will be tackling the opensource Ruby IDK as his first project at bdg.
Andrew’s distinguished background includes a Computer Science degree from St. Michael’s College where he graduated magna cum laude. He has taught Computer Science at the graduate level at SUNY Buffalo and at the undergraduate level at St. Mike’s. He’s also a published author and a former Research Assistant to two different professors.
A hardcore gamer, Andrew earned a volunteer position on the Tsunami Virtual World Project where he helps create infrastructure for some of today’s hottest Massively Multiplayer Online Games. Somehow he also found the time to start a business on the side called GamingPleroma, where gamers can buy and sell “virtual items” for real money through reverse auctions. While his business partner came up with the idea, Andrew was 100% responsible for building the LAMP-based site and serving as its webmaster.
Andrew can be reached at [email protected]. Please join me in welcoming Andrew to the bdg team!
Check out our logo on the BEAWorld sponsors page. We’re the first AquaLogic User Interaction partner to sign up (and the only one so far)!
Just in case you’re looking for our two opensource projects that were once accessible via the Plumtree Portal, you can now find them on BEA dev2dev’s CodeShare. Here are the links:
Mingle: https://mingle.projects.dev2dev.bea.com
PHP EDK: https://plumtree-php-edk.projects.dev2dev.bea.com
Enjoy!