Further Consolidation of the Java Industry
Oracle has finally managed to acquire BEA today. This is not surprising given the amount of consolidation that has been happening in the industry. BEA has a very good product set, however the company has had a narrow focus for a company of its size. With the commoditisation of the application server market, BEA would have been looking to the SOA server market for new revenue, which is still young and during a time of cautious spending.
It will be interesting to see how the product sets merge. BEA has had the superior and more popular Java application server. Oracle’s product set has improved with 11G, resulting in an impressive stack for building web-based applications from a rich user interface component set through to a solid EJB3 data persistence implementation with Toplink.
My guess is that the products will standalone for a time (years?) with the real focus on the SOA product set. BEA has the stronger solution with the Aqualogic suite of products. Oracle may lead with Aqualogic in the SOA server market while also focusing on its own Fusion suite of business applications.
So now IBM and Oracle are the two main Java Enterprise rivals that should be evenly matched in capability and market share. Sun sits in third place with a more credible open source strategy.
The other interesting news is that Sun will acquire MySQL AB. MySQL has been one of the most popular open source databases in use. Sun’s open source strategy has made many of its products easily and freely accessible to developers. Organisations are able to buy subscription services to ensure support.
Perhaps Open Source may gain as the market consolidates as a viable alternative that is usually first to innovate. For example, the EJB3 data persistence specification was heavily influenced (pretty well based) on the Hibernate open source project.
It will be interesting to see what this level of consolidation means for Java. Has Java reached a point of maturity where it will tend towards stability with a lessening in the pace of change (which is correlated with innovation)? Or will consolidation of control drive innovation such the development of business applications with workflow and service composition at their core? I am seeing both trends at present. There is plenty of room for Java to evolve, particularly in integrating functions (services) across a business processes, both within and outside the organisation.
There has also been plenty of innovation at the grass roots of building web-based applications outside of Java and .NET, in languages such as Ruby and AS3; creating user interfaces that would be familiar to users of social networking sites and other Web 2.0 applications.
Interesting times.
Hi Mark,
I’m not very in touch with Java these days, but watching the experience of others with new technologies such as you mention, (ruby, AS3 and their frameworks) it makes me wonder where there is a role for J2EE on new systems … if you had a choice. If you have technical/integration constraints or legacy constrains then its probably obvious, even to me. If you’re developing with a particular need for exceptional high performance or many layers of remoting for security, then perhaps? But if you have a choice and want to develop efficiently and effectively then are you better with a newer framework? Also, does team size and experience make a difference, i.e. statically typed languages with frameworks that really guide the developer, at the end of the day provide a less risky path throughout the life of your project.
Anyway, very hard for you to reply to such generic ramblings I’m sure … really I just need to post something here to get your attention so we can catch up when I’m in Wellington next week.
p.s. think you nailed it on the head in your earlier post about more guidance being needed on how various models and artefacts support each other. IT is a profession but I don’t think we actually help people learn what they need to to be confident in mapping a path for customers from the model of the business, their ideas and objectives to a model of a system that can be built, hopefully with a sense of the priorities and dependencies needed to makeup a sensible phasing.