Toolkit

Story: Will Longhorn outflank Java rivals?

Posted by: David Oliver (Wednesday 3 September 2003, 2:17 PM)

Microsoft have won the development fight in this FTSE 100 company.

.Net is the favour of the day, Java didn't even get off the starting blocks.

Why ? My Company SSE PLC has never really been a Microsoft Shop, more of IBM & Oracle money making machine. In fact as little as two years ago Microsoft hardly had a look in, NT was something that other people used.

So what changed ? The bottom line ! IBM started charging an arm and a leg more each year for the same service, Oracle raised it's licence fee. Like the cash cow we are, we were being milked.

Projects using Microsoft kit started creeping around the edges as small money savers. This just started a flood. Now I can't get my developers to stop using Visual Studio and go back and fix bugs in older systems.

All sounds like a Microsoft add, but put very simply, cost and productivity are going to be the winners in this game.

The development battle is one of hearts and minds. It's no small thing when realised that the future of companies and whole technologies rely on developer adoption. Microsoft and alike know this and have spent billions of $ on making their software easy and cheap.

This is why Linux is going to be massive, easy and very very cheap!

So a word to the wise, Oracle and IBM, you are only as good as your last sale ... and we aren't buying from you anymore.