Does IBM Actually Care About Java?
I just got through listening to another DotNetRocks show. This one had a couple of speakers including Ingo Rammer and Nicolas Landry. At one point the discussion moved to the question of whether Java is better than .NET. I'm going to ignore that question. It's been discussed before and there really isn't anything I could add that hasn't already been said.
However, there was one comment that caught my attention. The premise of the comment was that although IBM is actively supporting Java, they don't actually care about Java. Java for them is just another way to sell servers and software. The logical conclusion of this premise is that if IBM were to decide that there was more money in .NET then they would turn on a dime and drop Java.
Unfortunately, there isn't any way to get a definitive answer out of IBM. It would be foolish of them to say anything negative about Java and I wouldn't expect them to. I think, in this case, the answer will only come after many years when and if one framework becomes significantly more dominant than the other.
of course IBM cares about any company related to computers... whether or not they work directly with them. In order to stay on top of the game, they have to know as much as possible o.o
I just had to comment on your entry titled 'Does IBM Actually Care About Java'. IBM cares about Java because it allows the company, its ISVs and its customers to write applications that run on heterogeneous environments (not only OS, but hardware as well). This freedom from vendor lock-in is what IBM has rallied behind and urges its customers to consider when making purchases. This logic can also be equally applied to Linux, hence why IBM has rallied behind the Linux community.
The benefit is realized by IBM's customers when as they customer's company grows it can easily redeploy their applications from cheapo Intel hardware to more reliable Unix environments or even scale up to the mainframe.
I don't think that you can make the same claims when speaking about .net, or windows, or even C/C++ for that matter. The exception to C/C++ is that now that Linux is a contender it is conceivable that porting native applications running on Linux to more reliable/scalable environments is possible.
So, does IBM care about Java? In my opinion only so far as it solves problems that the company and its customers care about. If the .net CLR was available 5 years ago then maybe we'd have seen IBM rally behind that. However, we stand today in an environment where IBM has invested billions in both Java and Linux, and I don't see it very likely that IBM would switch gears at this time. So, it's not about turning on a dime because more money could be found in .net its about solving customer problems and choosing the best technology to make that happen.
Obviously, I've spent the last few years working with Java, so I am biased but I don't think that we can honestly say that .Net can solve many of the problems that Java can. However, if you live in a homogenous MSFT world then these advantages of Java may not be of importance to your circumstances. While maybe sometime tomorrow, when the open source CLR implementations become mature it will be possible to deploy .Net based business critical applications to non Windows environments and we'll see closer parity between .Net and Java.