AmberPoint to Attack HP With Skunk Works Project

Run-time SOA governance and control software vendor AmberPoint has pooled a team of its best developers into a special skunk works project with a remit to come up with products capable of attacking the likes of HP Software in the broader IT governance realm, Computer Business Review has learned.

The news came in a Computer Business Review interview with John Hubinger, AmberPoint’s founder, president, and CEO.

Asked about the company’s product development plans now that it has emerged as a leader in SOA run-time governance, with its products OEMed or distributed by the likes of BEA, SAP, Microsoft, Sun, and Tibco, Hubinger said: “It’s not like we have stopped innovating. I’ve just spun off six to eight engineers for a skunk works project that will address the broader lifecycle and governance sectors, including things like billing, metering etcetera.”

“They are also looking at transaction management because people still have all these different protocols like MQ, RMI, and they are constantly adding more too,” said Hubinger. “We want to be able to watch those transactions as they move across heterogeneous systems, do transaction tracing and so on.”

He added: “Not many people have gone to try and solve that problem, and yet those deals are usually bigger deals, because you are following the transactions.”

Asked whether the skunk works project was designed to come up with products that enable the firm to compete with probably its closest rival, HP Software on its own turf since HP bought IT governance vendor Mercury Interactive, Hubinger said, “Put simply, yeah. I’m not going to build a registry/repository product [like Mercury's Systinet registry/repository] but I am going to get deeper into the design-time of the IT lifecycle.”

Asked when the skunk works project is expected to return with something tangible, Hubinger said, “The way you decide how long to spend on software development is either to give it until a set time or to wait until you have a set amount of functionality. I may use either or both of those, that’s not been decided.”

Hubinger would not say what the skunk works project is called or indeed whether it has its own code-name.

“Larger companies just aren’t good at innovation, that has been shown time and again,” he said. “We have shown that with good engineering and the right focus, you can win.”