Re: IBM (Rational) Ada now owned by Atego!

[Britt <britt.snodgrass@gmail.com>]

On Aug 16, 4:45 pm, Nomen Nescio <nob...@dizum.com> wrote:
> Sorry if this is old news but I didn't see a post on the subject. IBM has
> sold their Ada line to Atego.
>
> http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/info/apex-ada/

The news isn't too old. Martin posted it here on Jul 25 and Atego had
announced it the Ada discussion group on LinkedIn.

I think it is good news since Apex was a very good (though costly)
development environment. I used it from 1996-2002. However IBM hadn't
changed it much in recent years. I hope Atego can revitalize Apex and
make it competitive again. While I'm currently a great fan (and
supported customer) of AdaCore and GNAT Pro, I know its not good for
the Ada language and the Ada user community to have only one healthy
compiler vendor.

AdaCore has taken over the commercial Ada market because they (in my
opinion) do everything right with their support subscription based
business model, their proactive development of supporting
technologies, their early implementation of new Ada standards, and by
strongly promoting the Ada language itself rather that just selling
tools. If not for what AdaCore has done over the last 17 years or so,
there would be much less use of Ada today. So while I wish Atego
success with both Apex and ObjectAda, I don't think they will regain
much market-share unless they choose to become more like AdaCore. If
they do then I think there will be enough business for all.

- Britt