2006 JavaOne Conference - Driving the Value of Compatibility

Thanks to the support of the Java community, the value of Java compatibility continues to climb. As a community, we have become a $100 billion Java marketplace.

Java platform compatibility is a key success factor here:

3.3 billion Java devices worldwide
1.2 billion Java powered phones (Source: Ovum)
750 million Java powered PCs
1.5 million Java Cards deployed
5 million Java developers

Numbers like this just couldn't happen without broad platform compatibility. It makes development, testing, and porting easier for developers, and it gives customers the broadest range of choices for their applications. Compatibility is one of the Java foundations that has really paid off.

What Value Does Java Compatibility Deliver?

Java compatibility means different things to people, depending on their job roles, challenges, and market opportunities. Here are what some of the developers and managers at the 2006 JavaOne conference had to say about the value of Java compatibility in their businesses.

Greg Passmore, senior software architect for Gemstone , which provides an enterprise data fabric:

I think the Java platform is pretty easy to develop for. The theory of "Write Once, Run Anywhere" actually tends to work out for us in a lot of cases. It helps us deploy in mixed environments and consolidate our testing. For example, we can have a Java cache running on a Linux machine that is sharing data with a Java cache on a Solarisg or Windows machine. We have customers on all three, and we can use the same software version and release in each environment.

Max Goff, chief marketing officer, Digital Reasoning Systems Inc. Digital Reasoning is a Java SE shop that builds Unstructured Data Analytics solutions based on a mathematical approach to natural language processing:

Java software is "the stuff." It's legacy. It's the next generation, the second decade, and Java is in the driver's seat.

Its compatibility has largely solved the nightmare of porting, it's a good language with awfully decent features, and then there's the combined skills of the global Java community. Compatibility works for us.

Another reason compatibility works is "the government market." Java technology is readily accepted and widely used there, which is big for us. It's a government standard.

Christy Wyatt, vice president of Ecosystem and Market Development for Motorola:

Compatibility and fragmentation are two related topics, and I think the issue of Java fragmentation is the biggest challenge for mobile developers.

If you're a developer today and you're trying to figure out where to place your next bet, where to put your next application, fragmentation makes it difficult because each and every phone is slightly different, each manufacturer is slightly different, and each carrier's support is tweaked and distinguished. It makes it hard to even identify your total addressable market. Testing for each device can be very expensive.

We've thought very carefully about how to address the problem. I don't think you can solve this just with tools and good programming practices. I think as an industry, we have to cooperate and focus on the technology itself, through collaboration processes, to tackle fragmentation head-on. This might be the biggest challenge the Java mobile developer has.

The mobile development space is huge, and it's still a little confusing and expensive for developers, so we are investing aggressively, for example, with shared IP and channel help, to help them take advantage of the opportunity and place intelligent bets. We want a thriving, shared ecosystem for mobile development.

Ted Farrell, chief architect and VP for Tools and Middleware, Oracle:

Middleware compatibility is really important in the heterogeneous environment we work in. Our motto is, "It's hot-pluggable," which means we're able to switch out the app servers we run on or the security model we use, for example. Well-defined interfaces really help.

When we go into a customer account, it's much easier if we don't have to convince them to throw out what they have and use our stuff. Instead, we can work around what they have in their heterogeneous environment and they can maintain their investment.

Jared Peterson, director, Sprint Application Developer Program:

As a carrier, the key for us is to work with third parties to have innovative apps that we can then give to our customers. The key to Java compatibility for us to make sure it's easy for developers to thrive, and the way they can do that is for us as a manufacturer to adhere to standards as much as possible. It's hard for developers to thrive working with just one carrier.

Device fragmentation has been a problem in mobile development, and we're working with Sun and others to help developers be able to write compatible apps. When carriers aren't consistent, it limits what the developers can do.

At the same time, we have some customers who haven't changed phones in years, so we have to support a range of standards. Sprint was the first North American wireless carrier to launch MIDP 1.0 and MIDP 2.0, and we have a member on the expert committee for MIDP 3.0.

Jon Bostrom, director of emerging technologies, Nokia. Jon, now at Nokia, was one of the original designers of Jini technology at Sun, recruited by Bill Joy, and he was the original architect for Javag Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME platform) (formerly J2ME). He now works from the "Lake Tahoe Nokia office."

Compatibility in the cross-platform device area, such as mobile, is critical. With a billion devices out there, you need something that's compatible across all of them. I think the exciting thing coming up is Java Specification Request (JSR) 232 , Mobile Operational Management, which brings a new level of compatibility and capability to the platform.

It allows cross-platform Java middleware to run on mobile devices. Until now, on mobile devices, we've only had an application space -- MIDP applications with multiple implementations. With JSR 232, we now open the stack up to allow middleware to actually execute on the mobile platform, much like Java EE provides that capability on the server. Being able to program into the middleware layer and end user layer extends the capability into Web 2.0. We're calling it "the Remote Control for Web 2.0." It creates a whole new service infrastructure, and we're excited about that.

Compatibility: Protecting IT Investments

To IT organizations, the Java Compatible brand stands for freedom of choice, investment protection, security, and high return on investments. But, you probably have your own compatibility value proposition. In the words of Motorola's Christy Wyatt, "Let's work together together to make it even better."

Learn more about the Java Compatible program at http://java.sun.com/j2ee/compatibility.html