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Java Wars: Enterprise Developers Show Loyalty


By Alan Zeichick
February 1, 2006 — 
In spite of fierce competition from Microsoft’s .NET platform, the usage of Java within the enterprise continues to increase, rising from 72.2 percent in 2003 to 77.4 percent today. And, another 6.3 percent say they expect to use Java within the next year. That’s according to the fifth annual Java Use and Awareness Study, conducted by BZ Research in December 2005.

BZ Research, like SD Times, is a division of BZ Media. This latest survey was completed by 724 subscribers to SD Times, and has an accuracy of (+-)2.5 percentage points.

“The strength of our development team is in [the] Java/J2EE technology stack. Using Java allows us to integrate open source software and projects that accelerate development or enhance the existing functionality of our product,” said one respondent, Bob Agamalian, manager of software development for First Consulting Group.

“Reasons for using Java: Portability. Ease of development. Same code in C++ would have taken nearly double the time. APIs available in Java,” said another, who did not wish to be quoted by name.

The use of Java breaks down with 66.2 percent saying they use or will be using Java Enterprise Edition (J2EE or Java EE), 59.0 percent saying they will use Java Standard Edition (J2SE or Java SE), and 9.8 percent indicating Java Micro Edition (J2ME or Java ME). While the usage of SE and EE remains relatively constant, within the accuracy of the study, the usage of ME indicates a statistically significant drop from 12.9 percent in 2003.

When compared with BZ Research’s most recent .NET Adoption Study, conducted in October 2005, Java usage continues to surpass that of Microsoft’s platform. Fully 68.4 percent of respondents of the Java study say that they have deployed production systems using Java; in the .NET study, 46.9 percent of respondents said they have deployed production systems using .NET. While the results may not be directly comparable, due to the nature of the two studies, the difference does appear to be large enough to be significant.

This data means, of course, that many shops use both platforms, or take advantage of interoperability between the two. “We build production J2EE Web applications. The real only other option would be .NET, but, we are already heavily invested in J2EE. Unless there were a compelling reason to switch, we will be on J2EE for the foreseeable future. Our Web services written in Java can always interoperate with other .NET islands,” said Mike Van Riper, Web applications lead with VeriSign.

That’s not to say that all respondents had good things to say. “We have some tools in Java but our customers all prefer .NET. All code shipped to customers is in .NET,” said one respondent. “Java is too slow, we don’t like the development IDE. J2EE has a large learning curve to become productive,” complained another.

“The most important reason, aside from a technical preference, is when another tool or SDK/API supports it. Often, when your options are Visual Basic, C# or Java, I will choose Java every time. I feel Java will provide me a longer lifecycle for my application,” indicated Jeffrey McDole, IT planning manager at the University of Michigan.

Application Servers
Since 2002, the Java Use and Awareness Study has asked about Java application server usage. In 2002, the top app server was IBM’s WebSphere (29.0 percent usage), followed by BEA’s WebLogic (24.5 percent) then Oracle, (20.8 percent), Macromedia’s JRun (14.7 percent), JBoss (13.9 percent) and Sun (11.7 percent).

IBM in 2005 reclaimed its crown, though the razor-thin margin remains a statistical dead heat, with IBM at 37.2 percent and JBoss at 37.0 percent. There is also a statistical tie between BEA and Oracle, with both at 27.2 percent. Sun showed a strong increase to 19.7 percent, while JRun continues to sink, and is now at 6.8 percent.

“JBoss is pretty darn good. My impression is that folks mostly use it for development. However, it has served us well in a production environment,” said Dennis Gesker, manager of special projects at Alamon Telco. “IBM WebSphere Application Server is expensive but the support is excellent,” said Mark Busemeyer, systems analyst and development lead at Ohio National Financial Services.

“A few departmental applications run on JBoss in production, but for the most part JBoss is used for development. Currently SAP NetWeaver is only used for SAP-provided applications,” said Fernando Olcoz, development lead at CEPSA, a Spanish industrial materials supplier. NetWeaver is currently at 4.5 percent.

Development tools
In the August 2002 Java Awareness Study, the top-ranked IDEs were Borland’s JBuilder (34.7 percent), Microsoft’s Visual J++ and Visual J# .NET (25.1 percent), Oracle’s JDeveloper (24.7 percent), WebLogic Workshop (11.7 percent), and Sybase’s PowerBuilder (5.5 percent). How things have changed.

In the December 2005 study, the top development environment is Eclipse by a wide margin over the second-most popular, IBM’s WebSphere Studio—65.1 percent to 20.0 percent. Eclipse usage has been climbing steadily, since it debuted in this research at 34.5 percent in 2003.

Borland has continued losing market share, falling to 19.2 percent, while Sun’s NetBeans has remained fairly steady at 17.9 percent. JDeveloper and BEA’s WebLogic Workshop have also been falling, and are now at 15.0 percent and 7.2 percent.

Feelings about Eclipse are mixed. “Eclipse is a fantastic tool; I’m very impressed with the frequency and quality of releases,” said Jeff Langr, owner of Langr Software Solutions. “I find Eclipse often too clumsy, so it is too bad that it is the closest thing to a standard and not something like JBuilder. That is the cost of vendors not working together and thinking they can corner a market niche,” said Bruce Wallace, president of PolyGlot, a custom development firm.

The next BZ Research Java Awareness Study will be conducted in late 2006.


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