At its professional developers' conference in Los Angeles next month, Microsoft will detail its latest weapon in its strategy to displace Java competitors from lucrative data centre contracts. The company will discuss a "Web services framework" code-named Indigo that will work in conjunction with its Visual Studio.Net development tool to try to simplify the creation of heavy-duty Web services applications.
Microsoft's strategy, not surprisingly, is to offer a functional alternative to J2EE through its tools and server software. With the forthcoming Longhorn version of Windows, Microsoft intends to make the Web services "plumbing" simpler to access for developers through Indigo.
Java was able to drive a wedge into Microsoft's tools business when it was first introduced in the mid-1990s because it offered more power than Visual Basic and less complexity than other programming languages, such as C++. Java applications can also run on several operating systems while tools written with Microsoft tools run only on Windows. Microsoft executives say that the introduction last year of Visual Studio.Net, its multi-language programming application for building Web services, helped shorten the lead that the J2EE crowd had gained.
Right now, Microsoft's .Net line of development tools and its J2EE-based competitors are running about neck and neck in terms of use. In a recent survey, Evans Data found that roughly the same percentage of developers -- about 32 percent -- are using .Net and J2EE for building Web services applications.
Businesses often have both Microsoft and Java-oriented software in-house. They frequently have programmers skilled in different languages and a mix of systems that accumulated over several years. Open-source tools for building business applications are also often a viable option.
"Even though it's pretty dead-even between the J2EE infrastructure versus .Net, we're finding that companies themselves are right down the line. It's not really divided," said Joe McKendrick, an analyst at Evans Data. "The question is not either/or, it's a question of how you leverage both infrastructures."
