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stay open, stay busy, and stay cool

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by Jon Byous
June 08, 2001

Many of today's keynote attendees expected fireworks: BEA's Bill Coleman and Oracle's Larry Ellison would pitch their stories to the same audience from the same stage within moments of each other.

First, however, Pat Sueltz, executive vice president of the Sun Microsystems Software Systems Group, walked onstage noting, "There are more than 350 companies and partners demonstrating Java technology-based solutions here this year. Today, Java technology is bigger than any one company. Bigger than Sun. Bigger than IBM. Bigger than Microsoft. It all proves that anything is possible when the community collaborates on open standards."

Pat Sueltz, Executive VP of the Sun Microsystems Software Systems Group

She continued, saying, "Network computing is based on standards. Standards ensure interoperability. These are the elements that keep the platform moving forward, spurring competition and giving customers a real choice."

Join the Java Community Process Program (JCP)

Sueltz also talked about the important role of the JCP program in maintaining open standards. Noting the organization's independence, she stated that fewer than half of the 136 Java Specification Requests (JSRs) under review were submitted by Sun. Further, two of Sun's submissions, JSR 76 and JSR 78, were voted down by the JCP. Sueltz said, "That tells me the community process is working."

She emphasized the importance of everybody's participation: "Join the JCP. Get your company to join. Participate in the expert groups. Don't leave it to the big guys. Register your comments on JSRs. Help keep the innovation happening."

Now, let's get down to the real sparks in yesterday's keynote presentation. BEA and Oracle. Coleman and Ellison. Kerosene and fire.

Bill Coleman: It Takes a Platform

Bill Coleman founder, chairman, and CEO of BEA

Bill Coleman, founder, chairman, and CEO of BEA, described both the challenge for the Java technology community and how BEA has leveraged Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) as a foundation for its web services products.

He told the audience, "We have to build a high-performance, scalable version of J2EE. That's what we've been working on, and that's just what we've done. And we think it is a huge breakthrough for the Java technology community."

Noting that large companies today typically maintain 5,000 to 20,000 traditionally coded applications, he said, "That creates a massive management challenge."

To illustrate the bottom-line effect, he cited a Meta Group survey of 2,000 CEOs: Three of five business opportunities are lost because of software infrastructure issues.

"These `selfish applications,' which often aren't integrated and don't share data, are creating a business-prevention environment, keeping things from happening.

"As the new de facto standard, Java technology increases productivity with components and improves efficiency after deployment," he said. One customer had experienced a 450 percent improvement in productivity using Java technology.

"That's why this room is full. This stuff really works, and people are really using it," he said, noting that BEA's survey of Fortune 500 and Global 500 companies revealed that 87 percent of them are currently using Enterprise JavaBeans software.

Flawless Demos

Coleman went on to demonstrate the newest and impressive innovations in BEA's WebLogic and new portal products, designed to automate web services and make a high-performance service grid possible at the enterprise level.

Wanting to stress that with BEA products every Java technology programmer can become a web services programmer, he recruited an assistant who, quickly writing only two lines of Java code, was able to combine an online traffic-monitoring service with a language-translation service into a single service that reported local traffic in French.

"That's the power of J2EE software. We've extended it, and it is really usable," he concluded.

Larry Ellison: I'm the Other Guy

Larry Ellison, chairman and CEO of Oracle Corporation

True to form, Larry Ellison, chairman and CEO of Oracle Corporation, took the stage swinging with fast jabs aimed at his direct competition.

He quickly moved through a no-holds-barred series of slides designed to dispel popular myths about Oracle's products being expensive underperformers.

At this point, the audience saw the full depth of the fierce competition between Oracle, BEA, and IBM.

Concluding his bare-knuckle comparison of product price and performance, he continued, "This is an open-standard platform. Why should you care? Because you should be able to easily compare products, and you're not controlled by one vendor. I don't like .NET. I like open systems. But that means everyone should be prepared for competition."

Ellison continued his emphatic fusillade, "This is the way the Java community works: Open standards, all of us aggressivelly competing for your business, making the Java platform better, more applicable, able to run your applications better and more reliably, scaling to more users, and all of us being open about information on our implementations."

And further, "I invite BEA and IBM and anybody else who wants to compete on performance and scability and standards, or anything else, to publish their results. And you, download and test these products for yourselves and go to Oracle.com. We'll publish what you say."

And finally, "That's the whole benefit of being on an open platform: You're not locked in by anybody. Just because you have BEA now doesn't mean you have to have it forever. You can move gracefully from one implementation to another. That's what open means. And if someone else comes up with a better implementation than ours, you should move from ours to theirs. The Java technology products you use today are not necessarily the ones you should use tomorrow. Why else pursue an open standard? That's why you picked Java technology and not .NET."

Then Ellison discussed innovations in the Oracle 9i product line and provided a series of demonstrations of Java technology performance improvements in them.

This Show Is Yours

This last keynote of the 2001 JavaOne Conference was an exciting demonstration of two industry personalities, armed with product performance claims, fighting for your attention and business. As ugly as it can get at times, you, the Java technology community are the winners.

As you finish the final day of this groundbreaking JavaOne conference and head home, stay open, stay busy, and stay cool. The world is yours for the taking.