QandA: Deb Mukherjee, Cognizant Technology Solutions

VB What are the hot platforms being used to develop apps these days?
Mukherjee Enterprise class applications are developed mostly on Unix, office extension applications on Windows and SQL-server. The mid-tier database king is still Oracle with DB2/UDB a strong challenger. The ISV momentum has definitely shifted towards Unix in the past year.

VB What are the hot tools being used to develop apps?
Mukherjee There has been precious little by way of new development tools in the marketplace. Extreme programming, however is emerging as an alternative development methodology, for smaller projects that otherwise are high risk and benefit from the pair programming style of development.

VB Has the emphasis on platforms changed compared to three years ago?
Mukherjee The emphasis has not changed. In fact there has been some significant consolidation in the market in the past 2 years, and 800 pound gorillas are becoming more and more dominant. Websphere and Weblogic have emerged as the primary vendors and other ISV momentum on these platforms are getting stronger

<VB What do customers care about in their apps these days?
Mukherjee ndustrialization--scalability, performance, recoverability, integrate-ability, availability, interoperability. In other words they care less about vanity web sites and quick and dirty approaches to delivering eBusiness applications. Customers are demanding that application have "well behaved ness" built into them from the ground up. Industrial quality is becoming the expectation.

VB Is Microsoft still the leading app tools vendor, or are we beginning to see someone take that title away from them?
Mukherjee Microsoft is trying to position itself more as a software framework vendor and less as a traditional tools vendor. It hopes to sell its software as a service, a model that is surely expected to be mainstream in the coming years.