IBM e Java

Colaboração: Rubens Queiroz de Almeida

Data de Publicação: 07 de Dezembro de 1998

Estou enviando para vocês algumas partes de um artigo que li na revista "Enterprise Systems", abordando o comprometimento da IBM com a linguagem Java. O artigo completo pode ser encontrado em http://207.87.15.215/articles/9309820906PM.html.

Vale a pena também visitar o site da revista em http://www.esj.com. Tem alguns artigos bem interessantes.

Agora, os destaques:

  IBM is getting serious about Java. According to analyst Christopher
  Carrigan of Summit Strategies, IBM is committing 1,200 developers, 
  $100 million on Research and Development, and $200 million a year for 
  future work to make Java its cross-platform enterprise programming language.
  Angus McIntyre, IBM’s Marketing Manager for Visual Age for Java, further
  maintains that incorporating Java across its product line is one of IBM’s
  three major software development priorities.  With this kind of attention,
  Java might as well have been e-mail scripture sent by Providence to Sun’s 
  Scott McNealy with a big cc to Lou Gerstner. So it’s fair to ask, what
  makes Java the new blood pumping through Big Blue? What Java products has
  IBM produced thus far? And what end game is IBM pursuing to captivate its
  customers with the promise of Java?
  --------------------
  Write Once, Reclaim the Architecture 
  
  It should be obvious by now that Java is no longer just a portable specialty
  language for enhancing Web pages. It’s on the fast track to becoming the
  enabling programming language for IBM inter-enterprise electronic commerce.
  But other vendors like Oracle and NetScape are also optimizing Java for
  their platforms so their Java brands will become less transparently
  portable, but more strategically powerful. Despite this trade-off, porting
  between these 100 percent Pure flavors of Java will still be a fairly easy
  task. By contrast, porting between 100 percent Pure and Windows Java will
  not. In Bill Gates’ Redmond laboratories, Microsoft seems bent on
  Frankensteining Java into a pumped-up slave of Windows. IBM, for one,
  sees in this scenario its greatest challenge and opportunity.  Carrigan 
  maintains that IBM aims to win the Java Wars by creating a brand of Java 
  that plays on all its platforms and, thus, offers customers an enterprise
  platform more open and appealing than the one controlled by Microsoft’s 
  Win32 and COM APIs. To do so, it must also supercharge Java’s functionality
  so it’s the preferred language for middleware e-com apps, a market Microsoft
  is attacking with its sky fleet of desktop apps and IBM is defending with
  its army of entrenched servers.  Finally, by offering an overwhelming
  multiplicity of development tools, comprehensive NCF architecture and 
  peerless global support and services, IBM strives to become the preferred
  provider of Java-based enterprise solutions. In achieving that, IBM
  will have recouped ownership of the IT architecture.