Middleware maneuvering

“Successful middleware businesses have to work on scale,” said Jim Baldwin, senior director of engineering for Microsoft Mediaroom. “The evidence is the long history of people being in the middleware business. The ones that have not achieved scale have not been able to stay around. You have to sell a lot of licenses to make it worthwhile to develop software. That's probably the guiding principle of this business.”

It might still be Microsoft versus the world, but the most significant issue facing the entire middleware market today, Vittore said, is that no company has yet found the right formula. There's no shortage of approaches, but no one has cracked the code for truly successful middleware. Both Hawley and Vittore agreed that market consolidation, new middleware players and shifting power structures aren't a fleeting trend. The industry is in the midst of another market contraction, and while the market may still winnow, it will take longer than originally anticipated.