Wow, that's a blast from the past! I did a big ATG Dynamo project about 10 years ago, when they had Droplets (IIRC) as their own alternative to EJBs, doing all that AOP lark that's all the rage now. They were one floor below us in the building opposite the mall in Cambridge, which made getting support very easy :-D
Indeed, ATG was hot 10/12 years ago. I have checked their "customers" page and they still manage to hold big accounts, like AT&T, Best Buy. Surprising, considering how heavyweight are their solutions.
Yep, I worked on AT&T's ATG-based implementation for their mobile dumbphones. Once you get on ATG it's mighty hard to get off, even if it's costing you millions of dollars in licensing/support fees.
Back then, their product really was one of the best. You had Dynamo and Sapphire (now owned by HP I think), then a big gap, then WebLogic that was only being used by existing BEA shops, then another big gap, then Sun/Netscape's awful iPlanet thing.
I remember that building, I spent some time at the ATG offices in early 2001-3. Those offices were unreal. They had their own Starbucks in the break room. I was always a little surprised they stuck it out.
Was this the Lotus building in Cambridge, MA? IBM had an "innovation center" on one of the floors (I think 7 or 9) that I used to work in when I worked for IBM in 2001. The Cambridge Side Galleria was close by. I stayed in the Royal Sonesta hotel that was attached to that building.
No, but it was nearby. I forget the name of the building but it was right across from the mall, near Hoshmand's I think. It was taller, brick, and had a big atrium.
It was the Davenport Building, http://www.thedavenportcambridge.com/. This was originally the home of the furniture company that manufactured Davenport sofas.
This is a play to compete directly with IBM in the e-commerce space. ATG, along with IBM's e-commerce offering (WebSphere Commerce), have been the top players in this area for some time.
There seems to be a trend towards consolidation for major e-commerce players recently, with IBM purchasing Coremetrics and Sterling, and Adobe purchasing Omniture.
No doubt. I've built/run ATG sites for about nine years now and they're the only company with worse pricing models, worse sales policies, and less honest CEOs than Oracle. I'm actually hoping the acquisition brings some sanity to their licensing.
As for Dynamo itself, consulting on broken ATG projects bought my house and car, paid for my wedding and law school, and has guaranteed I'll always be able to find work or a billable engagement.
And I have to say, business practices and fiduciary self-interest aside, I'd rather use Nucleus than Spring/Struts/Hibernate/etc. with their sloppy configuration and implementation mechanisms.
I've been working with ATG technologies since 2000, it has been a fun ride so far and I agree with you that Nucleus and DAS are much better and much more cohesive that what passes for J2EE technologies today.
Unfortunately I also witnessed Oracle buy Orion, one of the best J2EE application servers of the time, and turn into their own typical slow and bloated mess. The culture clash with Sun is today's story, I'm actually afraid that ATG products will also become something I dread. Good things I started looking for alternatives sometime ago.
