Ensure the success — and completion — of your real-world Java apps

In the Java world, the rate of new announcements for products, partners, initiatives, and ventures is staggeringly fast. In my opinion, all this frenetic activity points to one thing: Java now is transitioning from a curiosity to a real business-enabling tool. If we’re to take full advantage of this new opportunity, we need to move quickly to ensure that open, non-proprietary technologies become essential to winning IT strategies.

Java technology has provided a scalable and robust foundation for the delivery of real business applications. But now the real work begins: that of meeting customer needs and ensuring product value.

All of us (infrastructure providers, product developers, integrators, and consultants) face tough, focused competitors who are pushing proprietary systems to a market they understand very well. For Java to win, it will have to gain acceptance among the technology-using community as much as (if not more than) our proprietary competitors do now.

Sure, the old proprietary model (in which vendors such as pre-Gerstner IBM and DEC locked users into their own hardware/software environments) is going away, if not already gone. In its place, a new model is emerging, whereby interlocking suppliers work together using open, interchangeable components to deliver innovative world-class solutions. For example, the consulting firm I work with currently is developing a platform-independent, customer-care Webtop environment that uses front-end technology from Marimba and mid-tier technology from Novera to deliver a new type of customer service tool. The elements of this system (desktop environment, data connectivity, and so on) are highly interchangeable and give users a technology infrastructure that is quickly and easily tailored to their unique situations.

For many companies, quickly achieving this new, collaborative reality will take a concerted and highly-competitive effort from all parties (consultants, integrators, vendors, and customers).

I propose companies consider five things:

1. Focus on applications that work!
2. Develop an object-reuse strategy.
3. Establish an expertise.
4. Help your partners succeed.
5. Move fast.

Focus on applications that work

We have seen technologies start out with all the promise in the world, only to fall by the wayside when it was discovered that they were impractical or didn’t quite live up to all the hype and expectations surrounding them. Examples of this phenomenon include Apple’s Newton, artificial intelligence, wafer-scale integration, and the PCjr.

The failure of technologies to live up to their promise has resulted in customers’ distrust of vendors — because many vendors have done a rather poor job of setting and managing expectations and an even worse job of implementing solutions that work.

Let’s not let that happen with Java. We must focus on value, solving real business problems by lowering costs, improving efficiencies, and making businesses more competitive. And we must ensure that the application solutions we deliver are of higher quality than that of an equivalent fat-client application.

Thankfully, the “gee-whiz” mood surrounding Java is fading away. We can no longer get away with having something that merely uses Java in some form. Now, to be recognized as innovative, our programs actually have to do something of value.

Develop an object-reuse strategy

After almost a decade of practical, object-oriented development, companies now are beginning to report widespread benefits from object reuse. Object reuse can be loosely defined as the use of existing component objects, which are either internally generated or are acquired via a third-party, for the repeated development of unrelated applications. Object reuse allows companies to leverage the time and expense put into software development by spreading costs over a greater number of projects. However, designing object components for effective reuse requires top-to-bottom management attention. We should focus on building software objects that make us more competitive — and that means using JavaBeans.

Think about it. As we increase the number of sophisticated, interoperable objects, the number (and value) of possible software applications that can be created with these objects increases exponentially. Over time, this new software development environment can have a serious impact on the nature and type of IT applications we develop.

If both you and I develop an effective object-reuse (read: JavaBeans) strategy, then we can work together in ways that were never possible before. For example, “databeans” (JavaBeans that exist solely to converse with databases) can be used effectively with client-side bean interfaces to allow highly functional information services to be built very quickly. If you focus on making your databeans faster and more effective, and I focus on making my bean interfaces easier to use and richer in functionality, then we both win and are, in effect, working together to create new business opportunities.

This is powerful. The ability and motivation to cooperate in developing new and unique applications is, in my opinion, what makes the emerging platform-independent, network-centric world inevitable.

Establish a technical expertise

Achieving expertise in a focused technology area (for example, relational data connectivity, warehousing, data visualization, customer service applications, and so on) is toughest of all for integrators and consultants who, by nature, tend to do what our clients ask of us — sometimes regardless of whether or not we have the expertise! But in the network-centric world, when applications are interoperable and platform-independent, having a specialty will provide the greatest value and be rewarded the most. Find a specialty and make it your goal to become a world-class expert in that area.

Help your partners succeed

The premise here is that we have partners! If we are working together to make sure best-of-breed applications are being developed and complementary organizations, suppliers, and customers are in synch to deliver innovative solutions, then the strength of the open environment will be superior to the closed, proprietary model that has been so lucrative to certain software and technology vendors.

This concept of finding and helping partners dovetails nicely with the idea that we should find a specialty. World-class experts who establish a strong reputation for working well in cooperation with other partners are difficult, if not impossible, to beat.

Move fast

The fact that technology is changing rapidly has become so cliche that the statement has just about lost its meaning. That’s too bad, because rapid technological change is a fact of life, and some vendors still don’t seem to realize this. I was in a meeting recently with a large IT vendor who was discussing an upcoming middleware product and its schedule for delivery. It turned out that the developers were going to release the early beta for limited tests in one year! After that, they envisioned rolling out the production version of the product over the next two to three years!

This kind of long product schedule is astounding. Vendors cannot hope to compete in the high-tech product marketplace without taking an aggressive stance about where they want to be and how they are going to get there. It is our collective responsibility to do all we can to provide value in the form of applications and technologies that work as promised and solve customer problems.

Conclusion

Java has reached a new level in its evolution. The computing world is now ready for real-world Java applications. But this new opportunity demands responsibility from all parties concerned. In short:

• Vendors: Deliver what you promise.
• Integrators: Make sure the solutions work.
• User community: Don’t wait to implement — understand and take advantage of the benefits of thin-client, platform-independent systems.

If Java technology is going to reach its full potential, it will require a concerted effort by all industry participants to make sure the applications developed with it are more innovative and more cost-effective than the proprietary alternative.

Source: www.infoworld.com