Oblix? Buying Confluent?
Knowing both of these companies, and people working at them, I was initially confused by the announcement of this acquisition. Why would Oblix purchase Confluent?

Oblix is the maker of software to manage user identites within large distributed software systems. Confluent provides a web-services security management solution. It seemed to me that there must be some common thread … and then I found this article:

U.S. Postal Service taps Oblix for identity management
It’s designed to allow the Postal Service to manage millions of user identities
Briefs by Linda Rosencrance

FEBRUARY 04, 2004 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) – The U.S. Postal Service has selected Oblix Inc.’s NetPoint to give online customers secure and password-protected Web access via single sign-on to software tools and resources.

Once fully deployed, NetPoint will offer business customers and consumers a simple and collaborative interface through Web services, Cupertino, Calif.-based Oblix said in a statement.

Ok … now it makes sense. Oblix lands a large government contract … is adopting web services standards in their product … and immediately requires security for this solution!

Nice project to land … congrats to Oblix *and* Confluent!

Oblix buys into Web services management. The maker of identity management software plans to acquire Web services management start-up Confluent Software, accelerating consolidation in the marketplace, CNET News.com has learned. [CNET News.com – Front Door]

hard disk capacity trends 2005
These are the five words that I typed into Google to see what I could find about growing hard disk capacities. One of the articles that I found – Trends in the Development of an Ultra-small Hard Disk For Mobile Terminals – was exactly the type of info that I was looking for. In addition, this paper from IBM provides some very good insight and analysis of the hard disk density trends.

Overall, I am amazed that I am able to buy hard disk storage for ~$1/GB … or less. A quick check at CompUSA on-line will show a number of 160GB-200GB hard disks priced around this number … and they are not a “cheap” store. At other on-line stores the prices are even cheaper. I’m amazed to see this 200GB, 7200RPM Seagate hard disk for $199.99!

Combined with our 4Ghz processors that are coming from Intel this year, computers are continuing to meet and/or exceed the estimates of Moore’s Law. I’m thinking about when exactly I’ll own my first server with more than one ‘terabyte’ of storage? It’s only a few years away … if that.

Lots going on at Oracle …
Although all of the messages from Oracle are that things are going well, it seems that a lot of changes are going on at the database giant. Just the news since the first of the year indicates that something is going on.

When looking at the Oracle home page, its easy to see that they are looking to move beyond being “just a database company.” (As of today its talking about showing you Oracle Web Conferencing!) They have to do something. The Open Source database servers are coming … MySQL and PostgreSQL … and how do you compete with free?

Some of the recent articles, to me, indicate something is being felt … big time. “Oracle CFO to leave post, become chairman“, “Ellison: No need for wall-to-wall Oracle“, “Oracle CEO, CFO to preplan stock sales“, and “Oracle ships 10g database, cuts price” … all of these show that they are reacting to market pressures … IMHO.

It will be interesting to see how Oracle leverages its installed base, and where it goes next.

Oracle ships 10g database, cuts price. The database heavyweight ships the Unix versions of its much-anticipated 10g database, matches Microsoft on pricing and cuts the cost of its clustering features. [CNET News.com – Front Door]