Boole & Babbage Inc pulled out of negotiations to license Apertus Technologies Inc’s MQView installation, configuration and monitoring software after rivals Candle Corp snapped it up from under its nose (CI No 3,079). Boole and Babbage, San Jose, California, was hoping to use Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Apertus’s MQView for the administration and configuration of IBM Corp’s MQSeries messaging software, and had already announced it under its own name of MQAssist. Boole & Babbage will now have to either build a product itself or source it elsewhere. The company was tight-lipped about its future plans, but hinted at an announcement within the next few weeks. In any case, Boole & Babbage is now claiming that MQView had its limitations. It doesn’t support very many systems, and the user interface is not very usable. To add to that, one of our big UK customers had given it the thumbs down, the company claimed. MQAssist – in whichever form it eventually appears – is intended to complement Boole & Babbage’s own product line AutoOperator, which traps events in MQSeries, and presents options for troubleshooting. Meanwhile, Candle Corp plans to add a layer of applets and services to MQSeries this summer. Called MQSecure, the applets are intended to provide security policies to message-based communications infrastructures. Candle, which is concentrating on adding services to IBM and Microsoft Corp messaging software plumbing, has, aside from MQView, already scooped up a set of add-on services for MQSeries. These include PowerQ Software Inc’s application test and development software for MQSeries and Across Data Systems Inc Level8 MQSeries middleware.
