Tocada de narices a SAS por parte de WPS:
A BLIGHTY BASED software outfit that is being sued by a big US company in a bid to shut it down has just scored a win with IBM.World Programming’s WPS software has been approved as ready for IBM’s Linux on its system z mainframes.
World Programming (WP) is being sued because its software supports the American software giant SAS Institute’s Statistical Analysis System (SAS) programming language. The nod from IBM means that users’ programs written using the SAS language can be run under Linux on IBM system z mainframes.
This is a poke in the eye for SAS Institute because it means that IBM mainframe users don’t have to use its software to run their applications under IBM’s z/OS.
Instead the IBM mainframe community can use Linux to run their SAS workloads.
The WPS software undercuts the SAS Institute on price which is one of the main reasons that the US giant has been trying to shut it down.
A WPS spokesman told us that the the software uses the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) hardware for IBM z9 and z10 mainframe systems. IFL provides the advantage of increased Linux performance while reducing operating and software licensing costs.
IBM’s thumbs up indicates that as far as Big Blue is concerned the little British company’s WPS software does the same things as SAS Institute’s far more expensive packages of z/OS based mainframe software, which is the message that the small outfit wants to get out. µ
Lo que debería hacer IBM es comprar WPS (igual que compró SPSS) y poner unos cuantos ingenieros a mejorarlo y extenderlo. Así sí que se le comían la merienda a SAS…
Calla calla. Eso daría mucha emoción a un sector muy reaccionario. Por cierto, creo que SAS sería una buena compra para Oracle.
SAS se venderá, pero cuando se muera «el viejo», que es como llaman internamente al fundador. Tampoco le quedan muchos años antes de que se muera o se quede totalmente chocho.
Oracle tiene su propia «suite» de minería de datos (de hecho, compró Darwin, de Thinking Machines hace años) y es posible que lo que hagan sea darle cada vez más peso. A saber.
Pero ahí tienes al Juanito en el puesto 75 de la lista Forbes en 2009:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/10/billionaires-2009-richest-people_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank_3.html
Si vende SAS adelanta a Berlusconi que habrá perdido mucho dinero en dentistas.