
Oracle buys eCommerce giant ATG for a billion dollars - mac-mac
http://www.techcrunchit.com/2010/11/02/oracle-buys-ecommerce-software-giant-atg-for-1-billion/
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gaius
Wow, that's a blast from the past! I did a big ATG Dynamo project about 10
years ago, when they had Droplets (IIRC) as their own alternative to EJBs,
doing all that AOP lark that's all the rage now. They were one floor below us
in the building opposite the mall in Cambridge, which made getting support
very easy :-D

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smhinsey
I remember that building, I spent some time at the ATG offices in early
2001-3. Those offices were unreal. They had their own Starbucks in the break
room. I was always a little surprised they stuck it out.

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umjames
Was this the Lotus building in Cambridge, MA? IBM had an "innovation center"
on one of the floors (I think 7 or 9) that I used to work in when I worked for
IBM in 2001. The Cambridge Side Galleria was close by. I stayed in the Royal
Sonesta hotel that was attached to that building.

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smhinsey
No, but it was nearby. I forget the name of the building but it was right
across from the mall, near Hoshmand's I think. It was taller, brick, and had a
big atrium.

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pivo
It was the Davenport Building, <http://www.thedavenportcambridge.com/>. This
was originally the home of the furniture company that manufactured Davenport
sofas.

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smhinsey
Thank you. I couldn't remember that and it was driving me crazy. I thought
that was a really nice looking building.

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gaius
Close to Cheesecake Factory too! Good times.

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tmcneal
This is a play to compete directly with IBM in the e-commerce space. ATG,
along with IBM's e-commerce offering (WebSphere Commerce), have been the top
players in this area for some time.

There seems to be a trend towards consolidation for major e-commerce players
recently, with IBM purchasing Coremetrics and Sterling, and Adobe purchasing
Omniture.

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koevet
Who still wants to maintain servers, coders etc. when you have stuff like
<http://www.demandware.com/> ?

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rbanffy
Dynamo and Oracle. A match made in hell...

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reeses
No doubt. I've built/run ATG sites for about nine years now and they're the
only company with worse pricing models, worse sales policies, and less honest
CEOs than Oracle. I'm actually hoping the acquisition brings some sanity to
their licensing.

As for Dynamo itself, consulting on broken ATG projects bought my house and
car, paid for my wedding and law school, and has guaranteed I'll always be
able to find work or a billable engagement.

And I have to say, business practices and fiduciary self-interest aside, I'd
rather use Nucleus than Spring/Struts/Hibernate/etc. with their sloppy
configuration and implementation mechanisms.

Don't get me started on how much I miss DAS...

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quicksilver03
I've been working with ATG technologies since 2000, it has been a fun ride so
far and I agree with you that Nucleus and DAS are much better and much more
cohesive that what passes for J2EE technologies today.

Unfortunately I also witnessed Oracle buy Orion, one of the best J2EE
application servers of the time, and turn into their own typical slow and
bloated mess. The culture clash with Sun is today's story, I'm actually afraid
that ATG products will also become something I dread. Good things I started
looking for alternatives sometime ago.

