Posted on 10/30/2001 4:52:06 AM PST by Dominic Harr
Monday October 29, 8:44 pm Eastern Time
LONDON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - SAP , Europe's biggest software group, has decided not to use Microsoft's(NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) .Net software and is instead backing a competing offering from Sun Microsystems (NasdaqNM:SUNW - news), the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
SAP chief executive Hasso Plattner will announce next week the German group is to adopt Sun's J2EE architecture, a development platform for enterprise software based on the Java programming language, to run SAP software, people close to the talks told the newspaper.
SAP's move, if confirmed, is likely to be a blow to Microsoft, as the German group has one of the largest customer bases of any business software developer.
The 'Java' wars are about the most important thing going on in the technology field, and almost no one even knows it's happening.
Heck, most people haven't a clue what 'cross-platform' programs would *mean*.
In fact, probably the highest value part of .Net will be to creat a hybrid off-the-shelf/ASP model for business software. Right now, only larger businesses can afford real ERP. Microsoft will make it cheap enough for 50 person companies to get the same capabilities. Greap Plains will be to ERP what desktop publishing was to Agfa page comp systems.
I always thought that Java was the answer to the Microsoft hegemony, and that Linux would take off as an alternative desktop OS once Java apps proliferated. But that hasn't come to pass. Anyone have any comments?
I totally agree. (Imagine that!) I like .NET and I can see advantages of J2EE also, so this is going to be a real industry battle that most likely will have sides and never a clear winner. Competition is good.
On the 'outside'?
SAP chose what is the *standard* now. By far most implementations of distributed software are going Java. Ya'll just don't see the news, because almost no one watches this stuff.
That's why I'm posting it.
Microsoft is on the 'outside' on this one . . .
Actually, the applications are everywhere. They're dominant. You just don't hear anything about *any* of it, it isn't on most people's radar ( and most news idiots don't understand a topic of this complexity, of course), which is why I'm posting this.
Even Microsoft uses Java for their distributed web offerings. Go to The Microsoft Gaming Zone and play hearts, spades, chess, etc.
All Java applets.
Of course, above the table, Microsoft and the 'Microsoft only' crowd can't say a good thing about Java. Under the table, they use it. Typical
Java has become the standard for in-house corporate development. An article recently showed results of a survey that showed that the number of new Java development projects has passed new C++ development, and that Java programmers are more in demand than C++ and VB developers.
But Java's biggest 'win' has been server side development and 'rich-client' development (a 'rich, fully functional front end like those Java games -- online, never drop a connection, never crashes). The 'rich-client' dev is what I do for CSC. It really requires broadband access for the full effect, so it's not likely to penetrate to the consumer for some time yet.
Of course, the 'Windows Only' crowd will only run Java down without ever having used it . . .
Can you please either elaborate or provide references, so we may judge the accuracy of such a profound statement?
Is that the 'spin' straight from Redmond?
This is about development languages. SAP didn't get 'kicked out' of developing with .NET. They made a *choice*.
What a spin! This is why it's a 'war'. Ya'll MS people are willing to say *anything* to try and discredit Java, all the while MS uses it for it's own web offerings. MS is using it's full marketing clout to try and stop Java. You are a part of that.
SAP made a choice of what language to develop it's next version in. They went with J2EE.
I can offer you personal experience -- I'm a Java developer for CSC.
Or, you can read the thread,Study: Java to overtake C/C++ in 2002 from here in the forum.
But I really am not to concerned about 'convincing' anyone of Java's success. I'd rather you look at some Java programs and decide for yourself if it's superior.
Do a web search for Java Games, for example, and play some of the thousands of offerings.
I'm afraid I can't let you see the in-house tools we write, since they interface to our Oracle Financials and Lotus Notes. My employer wouldn't like me just showing that off, I'm think.
Dittos to that. We have customers who've tried to implement SAP and it still is not working properly. They also give their customers some incredibly asinine advise about implementation - advice which raises costs and increases the chance of error.
We saw a company smaller than ours who was lauding SAP and describing their great implementation. They spent more on consultants than we did on our entire system, which does everything SAP could have done for us, but better.
SAP sucks.
Having said that, I agree that this is a fairly big blow to MS.
We (CSC) currently use Oracle Financials, and are starting to migrate to SAP.
And the *next* version, if it's written in Java, will likely be a *whole new thing*.
Remember, the version you *don't* like is written in C/C++.
Actually, Java's strength is in Server Side programming -- servlets and JavaBeans have become the *standard* for server-side programming.
That is specifically the reason Microsoft is coming out with .NET.
I include these links to hundreds of 'client-side' Java programs specifically because the most common argument *against* Java is that it's a 'Server Side' only language, too slow for client side applications (applets).
"Can you please either elaborate or provide references, so we may judge the accuracy of such a profound statement?"
There is no doubt of the validity of this claim. IBM with it's WebSphere 4.0 application server has made J2EE THE distributed computing model for the enterprise. I'm talking big deployments here -- Bank of America, for example, has multiple mainframes running multiple instances of Java 2 in it's UNIX system services environment for applications such as MoveMoney and DirectBanking. These applications are written using the J2EE architecture and actually touch money, so they are serious. I don't know how much more distributed you can get than a nationwide network of ATM machines and mainframes.
We even deploy smaller scale applications using WebLogic application server and WebSphere on Windows 2000 Servers. These are also distributed, with multiple clusters of servers behind load-balancing IP masquerading routers handling client requests.
Microsoft's .NET strategy is not yet out of beta, and therefore has no chance of claiming any of the J2EE market share for any production applications, unless the IT managers / CIO's that authorize said transition want to look for another job.
Thanks in advance!
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