In my Aug. 7, 2003 column, I mentioned several companies that have gone the way of the PDP-11, including the fabulous SNA gateway vendor Rabbit Software. Many of you responded with enlightening anecdotes about Rabbit and its eventual demise. I learned that Rabbit coined and patented the term middleware, that the company was nearly purchased by Novell and that it eventually merged with Tangram, which still exists, though it finally discontinued the Rabbit product line in 2001.
And lest we forget that it's people who drive these changes, consider one Yakov Rechter, who wrote the TN3270 spec, which was, of course, among the death knells for SNA. Rechter is now involved with another promising technology: MPLS.
TCP/IP brought the birth of FTP Software, Quarterdeck, TGV, Wollongong, WRQ and other companies whose heyday was in the early '90s. Ultimately, though, Microsoft took care of many of these companies (and by "took care of," I mean "ate alive"), and Cisco took care of TGV and some others.
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