1.5 Summary

The challenge to IT professionals today is to efficiently develop and deploy distributed applications for use on both corporate intranets and over the Internet. Companies that can do this effectively will gain strategic advantage in the information economy.

The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition is a standard set of Java technologies that streamline the development, deployment, and management of enterprise applications. The J2EE platform is functionally complete in the sense that it is possible to develop a large class of enterprise applications using only J2EE technologies. Applications written for the J2EE platform will run on any J2EE compatible server. The J2EE platform provides a number of benefits for organizations developing such applications, including a simplified development model; industrial-strength scalability; support for existing information systems; choices in servers, tools, and components; and a simple, flexible security model.

By providing the ability to deploy component-oriented enterprise applications across multiple computing tiers in a platform-neutral manner, the J2EE platform can give fast-moving enterprises a significant and measurable competitive edge.