Key Insight

• The point of Web services is to make it easier for applications to work cooperatively with other applications, regardless of what programming language was used in creating the applications and of which platform those applications are run on. Therefore, the oft-times religious dispute between which is better J2EE or .NET is ultimately meaningless . . .

A good place to start when trying to understand the market positioning of Web services vendors to consider the two dominant approaches to building Web services applications: Microsoft's .NET architecture and the rest of the industry's Java-based approaches.

There has been a lot of press coverage regarding the battle between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft Corporation regarding each company's approach to developing and deploying Web services. In some respects this "battle" has religious overtones (some application developers are Java language and platform zealots and strongly anti-Microsoft, while others are Microsoft zealots and hold their fellow application developers in equal contempt). Thank goodness there are a lot of people who see the benefits of both approaches!

Web services isn't really about which approach to application development is right or wrong it is about cross platform, program-to-program interoperability. Ultimately, the companies that will be the real winners in the Web services space will be those that make it easiest to develop and deploy robust Web services-based applications that can interoperate with other, disparate application platforms.

This chapter examines the market positioning of J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) versus .NET. It dispels some myths and clarifies some issues related to each development environment. Further, it provides a basis for business executives to understand why various vendors have chosen to endorse Java or .NET approaches. With this knowledge under your belt, the subsequent chapters on product positioning and on comparative positioning (by vendor) will make a lot more sense.