David Chappell

  • September 2020
  • November 2017
  • April 2017
  • October 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • August 2015
  • April 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • December 2005
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005
  • May 2005
  • April 2005
  • March 2005
  • February 2005
  • January 2005
  • December 2004
  • November 2004
  • October 2004
  • September 2004
  • August 2004
  • July 2004
  • June 2004
  • May 2004
  • April 2004
  • March 2004
  • February 2004
  • January 2004
  • December 2003

Opinari

Get the Feed! Subscribe

Advancing Application Platforms: The Twilight of Vendor Consortia  
# Sunday, November 04, 2007
 
After graduate school, I worked for a while as a Unix developer, then spent several years in the networking standards world. I was a true believer in the value of these standards, and I remain one today. Without real standards, interoperability isn't possible.

Yet in the mid-nineties, I consciously changed my focus to the Microsoft world. I didn't make this switch because I thought Microsoft technologies were inherently better--they weren't, especially then. Nor did I stop believing in the value of standards for interoperability--they're essential. Instead, my attention had moved to application platforms, where standardization efforts emphasize portability rather than interoperability.

Portability is a more forgiving goal than interoperability. With networking standards, both sides must follow the exact same rules, or communication isn’t possible. Standards for portability allow lots more wiggle room, and so vendor and personality politics can more easily trump both customer requirements and good technology. It didn't take me long to decide that this was no way to run an industry. Providing portability across application platforms from different vendors while still making technological progress looked hopeless.

The big Unix vendors promptly proved me wrong. By rallying together around J2EE in the late 1990s, they were able to create a more or less common platform that provided first-class support for that era's enterprise applications. All of them were afraid of Microsoft, and they were able to work together quite well for several years.

This unity is now breaking down. It's not entirely clear why this breakdown is happening today, but one possibility is that the enterprise Java vendors have forgotten who their real competitor is. Spending time in the enterprise Java world often leaves me with the sense that these vendors focus more on competing with one another than on making common cause against their shared enemy in Redmond. Whatever the reason, the personal and political agreements that kept the enterprise Java world together are fraying.

Just as important, the kinds of innovation needed today often require a more unified approach. Think about Microsoft's Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), for example. LINQ requires changes to programming languages, development tools, and the application platform. Microsoft owns all three--C#/VB, Visual Studio, and the .NET Framework—and so it can make these unified changes. Trying to provide a similar technology for Java would be more complex: Sun owns the Java language, Eclipse is open source software, and each vendor has its own platform. Accomplishing this kind of multi-factor innovation in such a divided world is no easy thing.

Microsoft's recent Oslo announcement provides another example. The goal of Oslo is to create a broad set of innovations touching many aspects of the application lifecycle, including languages, development tools, integration, application management, and more. It's too soon to know which parts of this very ambitious project will succeed. Still, it's hard to believe that these broad changes across many connected technologies could be done by standards committees. Too many groups are involved with too many competing vendors.

If even some parts of Oslo are successful, enterprise Java vendors will need a new approach to creating its competitor. Especially when change must happen in a unified way across many technologies, standards committees don't work. Even groups less formal than standards organizations, such as the Open SOA group that produced Service Component Architecture (SCA), have a hard time creating effective standards for application platforms. While the vendors behind SCA were able to agree on a set of standards, for example, they can’t seem to agree on which of those standards to implement.

It looks like the years of J2EE unity were the high water mark of vendor agreement. I wouldn't be surprised if five years from now the dominant vendor platforms are provided by Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. The last two will both use the Java programming language, but they’ll vary widely in other ways.

We're headed for a world where the big vendors are forced to strike out on their own. It’s had a good run, but the era of vendor consortia for application platforms appears to be drawing to a close.


0 comments :: Post a Comment

 


Comments:

Post a Comment


<< Home