This is kind of interesting - last night's BOF was hosted by Greg Bonadies, who's the "Transition Manager" at IBM - this is the same set of slides, but hosted by John O'Keefe (IBM) and Eric Clayberg (Instantiations). One way to look at that is that Greg was giving the official IBM line, whether he liked it or not - now John has a chance to introduce Eric and let him talk to their future plans. Here's a picture of Eric and John, just before the talk:

Yep - that's it - John introduced the talk as "VA Smalltalk: going forward". Different message wrapper than last night :) First up - John explaining where IBM is, and what's going on at their end. Interesting - EOS for VAST is April next year, except for Z/OS (mainframe VA). That will stay supported. Makes sense - the customers who have that are likely big ones.

Reiteration of why IBM is doing this - Smalltalk doesn't fit in with their current development language/platform plans, and IBM is trying to get rid of products that don't fit. John is making sure to point out that it's a better idea to stay with Smalltalk (i.e., Instantiations) than to do a migration (i.e., Synchrony/CSC). That's a different spin than last night. Again - same slides, same information - different motivation. Another point difference - John is pointing out that the "migration" tools that Synchrony has are useful for dealing with Smalltalk, while staying in Smalltalk.

Bottom line - this is a much, much better message for VA users than what they heard last night, even though all the information is identical.

Ok - on to Eric, and the Instantiations plans for VA. Heh - interesting start - rocket launch with a humorous description of position. I can't possibly relay how amusing this is :)

Eric's bio (most of my readers likely know this) - saw Smalltalk in 1986, started serious work in 1991, helped found (the original ObjectShare). Went through PPD, helped found Instantiations. Has been a partner with IBM on VAST and Eclipse (et. al.) since then. In Smalltalk, best known for VA Assist and WindowBuilder Pro (as well as various GUI add ons). They sell a similar suite of stuff for Java - you can get the full rundown on that over on their website.

Important difference in point - in the transition strategy, Eric is making the point that they don't want people to move off VA - they want to help them stay on it. And what is the new VA going to look like? Current VAST, plus VA Assist, WidketKit/Controls and GF/ST. The list there is VA Smalltalk 7.0, due out in July. GF/ST will be delivered as a goodie.

Version 7.5

• Finish ANSI support
• More enhancement of IDE
• More enhancements to Envy/QA
• Integrate the RB
• Support for more Windows stuff
• Enhance the web stuff (some)
• additional migration readiness stuff

Version 8.0

• Longhorn support (Heh - that gives them a window, based on the MS schedule)
• More WS* support
• Investigate Namespace support
• 64 bit VMs

The migration readiness stuff - SMT tools from Synchrony. Everyone says this stuff is great, but have a look here. Two success stories, from 1995 and 1998. Both are VSE to VA stories, not a word about the story that Greg was pitching - Smalltalk to Java. Not a confidence builder, if you are insane enough to want to go that way. I'd advise more talk about Instantiations, and less (lots less) about that stuff. Eric went through pricing - that's on their website as well, just follow the link up at the top of this post.

And now he's running a set of demos on VA with the additions being added. Can't say I have a lot of experience with VA, but I did download a copy in order to look at submissions to the coding contest. The browser Eric is showing certainly looks better than the stock one I dealt with. The tools that are being bundled with VA certainly provide a much needed facelift.

Q&A, and the inevitable question: Can someone release Envy for VW? Instantiations did not get the code for that. Instantiations isn't about to do new development for that - 3-4 man years of development, and they aren't going to do it on spec.

Another one - VA on Mac? They don't sound positive on that either. They figure that it's a couple man years of effort to get there. Sounds like no.