Middleware at Adaptec

I worked for Adaptec in Silicon Valley in the Nineties. And got a crash course on how not to do many things. A smarter person would have learned something from this experience - but I did not.

This was when we were making the transition from the Industrial economy to the Computer economy. Or trying to make this transition.

I was right in the middle of this mess, seeing everything but understanding nothing.

Adaptec had manufactured Adapters for Desktop Computers, big things three feet high, three feet deep, and a foot wide. You couldn't do much with them, right out of the box, but had to buy (and install) adapters to make them do other things, such as use the Internet.

The Laptop computer included all these capabilities, right out of the box. and put Adaptec out of business. Adaptec decided it would reinvent itself, but did not know how to do this.

One of our engineers decided we would produce Middleware, and he would show us how to do this. He knew nothing about Middleware but came up with some weird stuff he thought would do the job.

It didn't, and Adaptec continued its slide toward obsolescence.

I was surprised this morning when I looked up Middleware on Wikipedia. It is several varieties of really cool stuff!