Whatever happened to the 'middle' in middleware?
Quote of the week:
"In the mid 1990s, 'middle' meant 'the gaps between applications and software components.' Middleware was technology you turned to in order to try to build distributed systems: transaction processing middleware, database middleware, object middleware... Middleware was a technological concept. ...Now, 'middle' means 'the gap in a technology stack between an operating system and packaged applications.' Middleware is now defined largely by vendors from a software product marketing perspective, rather than by customers from a technology perspective. Consider the portfolios of IBM, TIBCO, SAP, Oracle: they all talk about 'middleware stacks,' but these things include process management, content management, master data management, and business intelligence tools - and sometimes even DBMSs."