Solution Providers: .Net, J2EE Will Continue To Coexist

Microsoft launched its new version of Visual Studio.Net, the toolset introduced a year and a half ago, along with Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2003, at a much-hyped launch at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium here.

"We have the highest productivity in our application development platform," Ballmer told attendees in a morning keynote speech. "We have improved the connection between the way applications are built using Visual Studio.Net and the way they are deployed using Windows Server 2003."

Still, Rick Fricchione, vice president of enterprise Microsoft services at Hewlett-Packard, said the mix of J2EE and .Net in current IT environments is about half and half and will continue to be so going forward.

"We believe 50 percent of deployments will be .Net, 50 percent J2EE," he said. "You have to deal with both, so [solution providers] will have to learn both."

"There are always going to be customers that have both [J2EE and .Net]," agreed Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Current Analysis.

Indeed, even solution providers that pride themselves on J2EE expertise, such as Hayward, Calif.-based eForce, build solutions using Microsoft technologies and are expressing interest in Visual Studio.Net.

"We are actively evaluating Visual Studio.Net 2003 and the differences between it and the current version, as well as the overall differences between versions 1.0 and 1.1 of the .Net framework," said Fredrik Sjodin, senior technical director at eForce. He added that whether or not eForce upgrades to Visual Studio.Net 2003 will depend on customer interest.

Sjodin noted some strengths and weaknesses of J2EE and .Net.

J2EE is a more mature platform with "a wide adoption rate and the wide range of platforms on which implementations are available," he said. But Java's maturity is something of a drawback, too, because parts of the Java specification are outdated and are difficult to update due to compatibility issues with earlier versions of Java.

Visual Studio.Net has an advantage because of its "enormous existing Microsoft client base that is, and will, be migrating to the .Net platform," Sjodin said.

Sjodin also praised Microsoft for abandoning Common Object Model as its component model and implementing a Java-like programming model for .Net. "This is actually a great benefit for everyone involved since it allows for the same object-oriented principles to be used across the platforms," he said.

Limitations of .Net include the fact that it is currently limited to one vendor and one platform, as well as its relative newness, Sjodin said.

However, Brad Murphy, executive vice president of strategic business development at Paris-based solution provider Valtech, said the fact that .Net is provided by only one vendor actually gives it an advantage and the variety of vendors that offer J2EE-based platforms can negatively affect ease of use.

"Microsoft gets to control everything that happens with .Net," Murphy said. "J2EE [represents] a universe of companies. The downside [of this] is out of the box, J2EE is never going to be quite as elegant, integrated the way the Microsoft [tools] are."