Java wins attention of Fortune 1,000

If you’re wondering when Java will impact the business community, look no further than this year, says Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, MA. Forrester surveyed 50 Fortune 1,000 companies that are doing Internet applications development and found that 62 percent currently are using Java, and another 22 percent will use it by 1997.

According to Forrester senior analyst Don DePalma, the majority of the companies studied — in industries varying from electric utilities to apparel — have Internet initiatives clearly in mind and Java developers already on staff.

For many companies, Java is now considered strategic. Forty-two percent of the companies studied believe that at some point this year the language will be a key element in their business applications. Another 14 percent expect Java will be strategic sometime after this year. Clarifying Java’s strategic role for businesses, DePalma explained that developers “are building real applications that they intend to share and employ throughout the organization,” and that Java serves as the “underpinning for real applications.”

Java: the short-term view

Based on Forrester’s research efforts, by the end of 1997 “Java will have been used to create at least 60 percent of Internet computing applications.” The firm attributes Java’s success to four points: its perception by the IT industry as a mature language, resulting in the development of applets and Java products; its ability to animate Web pages and deliver valuable funtionality for businesses (such as search capability and real-time information tracking); the huge popularity of Java among tools vendors because of its portability and perceived performance improvements over other languages as well as its complementary role with ActiveX in the Internet arena; and, finally, its future role in server applications.

The Forrester report expands on this last point:

Development teams will prefer to work in a consistent language across client and server development — though this is not a requirement. Java clients and Java servers can pass identical data structures between them. This will make it easier to build Internet Computing applications. Class sharing between server objects and applets will allow Java applications to stay as up-to-date as the on-line news. Multi-threading will give Java servers a performance advantage, particularly for databases. Runtime checking makes servers less crash-prone than if written in C or C++, an advantage for a shared resource.”

Java put to use

How are Fortune 1,000 companies making use of Java tools and applications? The programming language is helping to enliven Web pages, take the weight off client software distribution and installation, and free developers and users from software that is platform-specific. As a concrete example of Java’s use, firms reported that they will rely on Java for their intranet operations — to enhance and add interactivity to internal corporate networks.

The rise in Java’s use by the business community, as forecast by Forrester, is discussed in “Why Sun’s Java Software Has PC Players Scrambling” (Investor’s Business Daily, June 4, 1996, p. A8). The story pays lip service to security problems caused by hostile applets. Sun is now addressing this issue, implementing security systems like applet signing. Meanwhile, software companies are coming up with their own approaches to security. For example, on July 29, a new company called Finjan Software Ltd. introduced SurFinBoard. “You can think of SurFinBoard as a kind of anti-virus tool for Java,” said Finjan president Shlomo Touboul. This “alarm system” for Java-enabled browsers displays the activities of applets running on the local machine and warns users if a breach of security occurs.

Platform-dependent Java?

Forrester’s analysis shows Java increasing in use over the next year in Fortune 1,000 companies. Yet over this same period, the language is in danger of being “coopted,” to use DePalma’s words, by Microsoft. Having neglected to take early advantage of the Internet explosion, Microsoft has speedily recast OLE as ActiveX and has built a rich application environment that not only incorporates Java but lays claim to platform independence. Not surprisingly, ActiveX currently runs only on Windows; plans to run on Unix and Macintosh are vague at best. (During a recent meeting with JavaWorld editors, Microsoft’s Cornelius Willis claimed that the company is working on cross-platform capability “as fast as is humanly possible,” but was unable to specify when ActiveX components will run on the Mac or Unix operating systems.)

As DePalma sees it, Microsoft’s strategy is to “lock down ActiveX and Java interoperability,” tightly integrate Java and Windows, making this the fastest platform around for the language, and, through its Java interpreter/compiler, layer a COM interface on Java.

Java: the long-term view

For forward-looking companies who believe in Java, the future looks good. As more companies realize the value of the Internet, the need for business applications that both are interactive and deliver commercial value to employees, customers, and business partners in companies worldwide will increase, which in turn will boost the importance of Java.

Here are a few tips from Forrester regarding Java’s direction in the next four years:

Java will hit its stride in the IDE and power tool space in mid-1997 and become a force on the server in early 1998. Plan for Java ubiquity — but watch out for: 1) an increasing reliance on features specific to Windows, HP-UX, and other major platforms — and loss of Java platform independence, and 2) tools that don’t make it. For business-critical applications like order entry: 1) If you’re heavily committed to Visual Basic or PowerBuilder, hold off on Java until mid-1997 when the tools are better, and 2) if you’re a C/C++ druid, dive into Java right now.” The report recommends that IT reorganize around the component build/buy model, with companies creating new applications by combining applets that have been bought with those that have been specially built. Forrester projects that IT will assume “a critical new role as it will be asked to supply new media Java widgets for content developers.

By 1999, the number of Java programmers will rise. Increasing numbers of applets and Java applications will be possible through Netscape’s JavaScript. The presence of Java application servers will lead to the delivery of connections to databases and transaction systems. With Java porting, object reuse, and relative platform independence, Java will retain its popularity among ISVs. In fact, by the turn of the century, the core applications vendors will redefine themselves in terms of Java.

Conclusion

The report concludes that “Java will become the universal language of Internet Computing, enthusiasm for Java will drive record time-to-maturity, and a Java-aware software architecture will allow corporations to build an interactive new customer connection with high business value.” Forrester indicates that the combination of Microsoft’s implementation of Java, Netscape’s JavaScript, and the software tools steadily being released will open up the playing field to a wider range, and greater number, of Java programmers, developers, and users, making the language truly ubiquitous.