The most widely publicised piece that I wrote was “EII Dead on Arrival” back in July 2004. Metamatrix was the company that launched the term on the back of heavy funding from top end VCs, and I wrote previously about what seemed to me to be its almost inevitable struggles. There was some controversy over my article, which differed from the usual breathless press coverage which was associated with EII at the time (our industry does love a new trend and acronym, whatever the reality may be). I could never see how it could work outside a very limited set of reporting needs. Well, as they say on Red Dwarf: “smug mode”.
Gravity finally caught up with marketing hype this week, and Metamatrix will be bought by Red Hat and made into open source. It would have been interesting to know what the purchase price was, but Red Hat were keeping quiet about that. It is a fair bet that it was not a large sum of money. Kleiner Perkins won’t be chalking this up as one of their smarter bets.
