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Tomcat Roars Alone


Tomcat users look to the Web for support, favor simplicity

By Alex Handy
November 8, 2007 — 
Tomcat has clearly marked off its turf in the corner of the Java alley.

For companies deploying Java-backed Web applications, the Apache Software Foundation's Tomcat Web container is used by almost two-thirds of corporate Java developers, according to BZ Research, a division of BZ Media, which publishes SD Times. Those kinds of numbers imply that there should be a bustling community of open source service and support companies cropping up around the platform, but that’s not the case. Even the nation's largest Apache service and support company, Covalent, sees this open source application server as a breeze to support.

Tim Dean, a QA engineer and senior systems administrator with Military.com, doesn't have an emergency phone contact for Tomcat. His company, a subsidiary of Monster.com, purchases support contracts for much of its network and server equipment, but despite being in a production environment where everything runs on Tomcat, Dean doesn't feel like he needs a service-level agreement (SLA) for it.

“We've always had good success with products from the Apache Foundation,” said Dean. “The amount of open source support makes it really easy to maintain without support contracts. For the open source sys admin who prefers to do things themselves, it's really comforting.”

But that doesn’t mean that Mark Brewer, CEO of Covalent, is unhappy. His company sells SLAs to enterprises running Apache software, and Tomcat coverage is currently the most popular of his company's service and support offerings.

“It is our largest new customer base over the last three years; 60 percent have been Tomcat. We started supporting it in 2001 when it was fairly immature. Now we have full-time Tomcat engineers on staff,” said Brewer.

He admitted that supporting Tomcat is much less trouble than, for example, the Apache Web server. “It's easier to self-support for Tomcat than Apache. Apache people know it's been around forever; the code changes a lot, but people don't upgrade that often. Tomcat...because it’s a Java application server, the [first] perception is…it needs support,” said Brewer.

Over the past three years, Tomcat service and support contracts have made up 60 percent of Covalent's new subscriptions, said Brewer. With numbers like that, it's hard to ignore the power developers have given themselves through Tomcat usage.

Brewer explained that, as he sees it, Tomcat's success came about “largely because developers started out with Tomcat on their desktop.” Because IBM's WebSphere and Red Hat's JBoss both have Tomcat built in, much of the code developers tested out on Tomcat on their desktops could quickly be moved onto the production application server.

Simplicity a Virtue
But as time has worn away the glimmer of the J2EE specification, that shortcut became a two-way street: Brewer said that many shops contracting with Covalent slowly learned that they didn't need any of the flashy bells and whistles available in commercial products from BEA Systems, IBM and Red Hat. All they really needed was a Java 5-compliant Web container with clustering. Thus, those applications that had been developed on Tomcat and migrated to WebLogic, WebSphere or JBoss were suddenly coming back the other way.

Since Tomcat 5.0, the software has supported clustering, and this has become the only real point of confusion around the product, said Brewer. Tomcat clustering classes and Webinars have become some of his company's most popular offerings. With clustering in the mix, said Brewer, companies such as Morgan Stanley have been able to move their entire Java application portfolios onto the platform, at tremendous cost savings. “In our customer population, at least 60 percent don't use EJBs [Enterprise JavaBeans]. They could just use Tomcat, so many of them are switching to Tomcat. It's like an untold secret BEA doesn't want anyone to know,” said Brewer.

Michael Goulde, senior analyst with Forrester Research, said that he's seen Tomcat uptake rise since 2005. But it's not just Web developers listening to Tomcat's meow; SOA developers are lending an ear as well. “Java EE servers are not the be all and end all of SOA today. There are a lot of other options,” said Goulde.

“Once it dawned on people they didn't need a full-blown J2EE container,” he added, “Tomcat became the choice. Probably after the Apache Web server and MySQL, my guess is it’s the third-most-used open source component.”

Raven Zachary, research director for open source at the 451 Group, said that Tomcat usage hasn't sparked the kind of service and support plans that keep JBoss and MySQL afloat. “You would have thought by now, with Tomcat being successful, some venture capitalist would have thrown money into a company to hire all the Tomcat developers,” said Zachary. “Maybe it's just that easy to self-support. But if you can put a dollar amount loss to each minute you're down, you should probably have an SLA for support.”

Zachary pointed to the maturity of Java as a primary driver for Tomcat uptake. “I think EJBs have fallen out of fashion. A lot of the technology has come down to Java Standard Edition,” said Zachary, “and Tomcat does for most people exactly what they need it to do. I think that's been, for a lot of people, good enough.”


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