It worked for Sybase, didn’t it?

Some years ago, before the web was the be all and end all, there was a struggling database software company named Sybase, which was struggling with a single digit market share against Oracle and IBM. There was also a very popular corporate application development tool named PowerBuilder, from a company called PowerSoft, which was winning awards and gaining adherents but also attracting the attention of another little company called Microsoft. The executives at Sybase thought they could save their company by expanding into the development tools business, so they bought PowerSoft. Of course what this meant was that not only were they competing with Oracle and IBM, two much larger companies in the database business, but they were also competing with Microsoft, which had once been a partner.

Now, Novell wants to try its hand at the acquisitions game (again). The once ubiquitous networking company has made a deal to acquire SilverStream Software. As if past purchases of vendors of unrelated software (*cough* UNIX, *cough* WordPerfect) worked out so well. And, after all, SilverStream was founded by several of the executives responsible for PowerSoft’s success. So we see a struggling company, losing badly to bigger competitors in a market in which it was once strong, turning to a company founded by David Litwack and friends to change its fortunes.

SilverStream, though, has not been the success that PowerBuilder was; PowerBuilder won award after award and built some serious market share but one can’t same the same for their second effort. Back in the day, when I was writing for Software Development Magazine, the regular reviewers fought over who would get to review the latest version. And I remember when SilverStream emerged from stealth mode, probably back in the spring of 1997, as the newest competitor in the application server market; the news made most of us at NetDynamics more than a little bit nervous. But fortunately for us, lightning didn’t strike twice, with the new company focusing on the wrong part of the package (slick development tools) and not enough on what customers really wanted (fast, robust, powerful server software). SilverStream refocused, then refocused again, and now claim to be a web services company. Which means precisely what?

Now Novell, which has had much more publicity in the past two years due to their merger with consulting firm Cambridge Technology Partners than any software release, think they can leverage SilverStream to get their stock ($3.40 as I write this) back to where it was five years ago (around $8). But what they’re really doing is putting themselves more squarely in the sites of IBM, Sun, Oracle, BEA, and Microsoft, all of which are firmly entrenched in the web services space and all surely happy to finish the job of crunching Novell into the dirt like an old cigarette butt.