[monstermonster]

No they're not. I've worked with them. They are pretty good at turning around typical enterprise tech platforms that are in trouble. I'm not talking about CRUD stuff but heavy integration and workflow stuff with hundreds to thousands of tables that scales to thousands of concurrent users. They know the tech very well and know how to get from A to B cheaply which is incredibly difficult. They know how to organise large teams as well and have a good tech relationship with a lot of vendors which is really important.

Not joking but what we threw at them had a codebase that would scare a lot of people and they sucked it up and spat it out in good shape and they did the same with the team too.

As for Fowler, the analysis and formal descriptions he wrote up for PoEEA are rather good. Read the book at least once. You'll understand why things like hibernate were written and what problems they solve.