JDJ INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE: The End of Middleware
By Jonathan Schwartz, Executive Vice President, Software Group, Sun Microsystems
This story originally appeared in Java Developers Journal Vol. 9 No.2, February 2004.
What's more important: Running your business or integrating middleware?
Should be an obvious answer, right?
Then why is the marketplace spending so much energy wallowing in the history
of "middleware is everywhere"? Habit. A habit to which thousands of IT
professionals devote their lives. But integrating middleware to build one-off
business systems is about to perish with the rise of shared services - the
services you'd like to build once, then execute on behalf of all your business
systems.
As an example, when's the last time you hired someone? Remember what it was
like getting them "badged" and into the company? You had to grant them access to
payroll, benefits, a desktop login, e-mail, the CRM, and forecasting systems,
then assign them an office and a phone.
Most likely, your company built a unique provisioning mechanism for each of
the systems I just cited. One for HR, one for the sales force, one for
information security, and yet another for physical security. And then you likely
created even more redundancy by building one set for your intranet employees and
another for your Internet customer or supplier systems. That's inefficient, and
in the world of Sarbanes-Oxley, a real problem - who has access to what? And why
did you build 17 different systems?
Because it looked like a good idea at the time.
The same is true for most services that now make far more sense in a shared
environment, from portals (how many does your company have?), to e-mail and
application services, down to clustering and Web servers. There's no real
utility in having multiples of these services, as Nicholas Carr would point out,
where your implementation doesn't generate a competitive advantage. How you
authenticate users and provision them with access to your systems is an unlikely
competitive advantage. So why build a one-off solution instead of relying on an
integrated system?
Good question.
Our belief is that the vast majority of Web services are better run as shared
services. What's the holdup, then? When we looked into this a year ago, we found
three challenges:
1. Roadmap sprawl - There's no coordinating force causing all the required elements of shared services (from authentication
to portals, Web services to clustering) to coalesce around a common release,
interoperability, or support matrix. So you have no choice but to build your
own.
2. Pricing - Middleware pricing is anything but shared - per CPU, per identity, per mailbox, per portal, per cluster node -
pricing opacity obscures the real savings in running shared services. And if you
can figure it out, you probably can't afford them.
3. Licensing - The industry relies on "common access licenses," often tripling prices for services that touch the
Internet - that's clearly an obstacle to shared services.
So here's how we solved the problems:
1. The rise of Sun's Java Enterprise System: Sun's Java Enterprise System offers all the basic
components, from directory and identity management to Web services, even e-mail
and clustering. All in a single deliverable, prequalified, tested, and supported
on multiple platforms.
2. Pricing goes to a $100/employee subscription: Why buy software differently than how you buy
office furniture - by the employee? If your workforce decreases, you pay less,
and vice versa. The ultimate in predictable, transparent pricing.
3. Licensing - infinite RTU: If the distinction between the intranet and extranet is disappearing, so should the
distinction in our licensing. So $100/employee buys you the right to use (RTU)
all these services on all systems. At infinite scale - once you've paid for your
employees, your customers are free. Free. It's your software.
The vendors who believe hardware is commoditizing suggest the same forces
won't affect software. We believe it affects both.
And as the world moves to recognize the value of a shared services
infrastructure, it's our belief that middleware is history.
Long live the system. The Java Enterprise System.
About the Author
As executive vice president of Sun's Software Group, Jonathan Schwartz leads the company's unified software business and focus. Sun's market leading software organization is one of the largest in the industry, responsible for the Solaris Operating Environment, at the heart of today's platform, the standard bearer from cell phones to datacenters; and the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) family of middleware and software solutions. Previously, as Chief Strategy Officer, Schwartz directed Sun's long-range planning and corporate development activities, including mergers and acquisitions, Sun's venture capital portfolio, and the oversight of strategic initiatives, including the Liberty Alliance, an industry alliance to promote standards around network identity. Previously, Schwartz headed Sun's investment group, and ran Sun's development tools and Java product marketing organizations. Before joining Sun in 1996, Schwartz was chief executive officer of Lighthouse Design, Ltd., which Sun acquired. He began his career as a consultant with McKinsey & Co., Inc., serving financial services companies. Schwartz is on the board of directors of Dorado Corporation. He holds degrees in economics and mathematics from Wesleyan University.
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