Given Microsoft Corp.s aggressive marketing techniques, many businesspeople may be led to believe that it is Microsoft or bust when it comes to computer applications and technology. And though the software giant does seem to have a stranglehold on PC applications, its product offering for large businesses is a relatively new and unproven solution.
.Net, Microsofts new strategy and product set, is designed to enable corporations to do business through the Web. But it has a strong competitor: J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition), which is designed for the mainframe-scale computing typical of large corporations.
The Gartner Inc. consulting firm estimates that by next year more than 45% of integrated-channel delivery products from top-tier banks will be based on J2EE and its components, Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs).
Sun Microsystems, together with International Business Machines Corp. and other industry partners, designed J2EE to simplify application development in a thin-client environment. J2EE is a popular way of supporting transactional applications, particularly for brokerages and financial firms. There are several reasons that financial institutions should opt for J2EE over .Net.
First, J2EE offers better functionality and flexibility than the previous version, and certainly much more than Microsofts competing COM+ and .Net offerings. Compared with COM+ and .Net, Enterprise Java Beans provide a proven technology through a wider choice of vendors, faster time to market, and future maintainability, and better use of existing IT assets.
Though the Microsoft COM+ and .Net products are more open than previous offerings, it still is a restrictive proprietary standard because it is designed primarily to work with other Microsoft products, including Windows 2000 and Windows NT.
J2EE, on the other hand, uses the open-source format (a program whose source code is made available for reference, modification and extension to meet user-specific requirements), so it can work and interoperate with many other applications. The open source format features the EJB components, which are flexible and platform-independent. Applets or full applications, whether designed in-house or obtained from outside vendors, can be added to give users more robust and complete software solutions.
J2EE simplifies application development and lessens the need for programming and programmer training by creating standardized, reusable modular components. Thus banks that use it can make better use of their IT assets. Since the components are reusable, new applications can be rolled out in less time than if they were to be written from scratch. This lets banks easily respond to changes in market demands.
A report from Aberdeen Group says that use of client-side Java results in a 10% to 20% faster time to market, and a 10% to 20% improvement in application quality, both of which result from increased customer choice.
J2EE represents the combined expertise of a collaborative effort. Many of the tech sectors heavy hitters, such as Sun Microsystems, IBM, BEA Systems, and Oracle, offer suites of Java-based solutions. Customers can select products from an ecosystem of platforms, tools, and components. If a customer stays with the J2EE standards, then new infrastructure and platform technology can be adopted with minimal changes to applications.
With a wider range of application vendors, financial institutions and other companies can select the application or applications that fit their particular needs, rather than settle for inadequate solutions based on a single Microsoft platform. The Microsoft platform often faulty and subject to system crashes requires a specific middleware application, so applications based on it cannot be ported to a better middleware solution when one comes on the market. Banks can run J2EE on a dozen different operating systems, but .Net is only compatible with Microsoft applications and servers.
With applications with more reliability are developed at lower costs, (and the savings can be partially passed on to customers without affecting profit margins) financial institutions using Java-based applications will also produce better customer satisfaction.
With competition increasing daily, customer satisfaction is critical to a banks long-term health.
Bankers must realize that their companies stability and profitability may depend on the brand of technology their software is based on.
Improved service, the ability to roll out new delivery channels faster, and the tremendous amount of support from multiple vendors make Java-based apps the clear choice for enterprisewide computing.
Mr. Piper is the president of Eontec North America, a Charlotte, N.C. vendor of Java-based software for financial services companies.
