According to a recent Gartner report, the Java platform and .NET will account for a nearly equal share of global application deployments through 2010, splitting about 80 percent of the total market. Research indicates that each camp will attract about half of college graduates. Five years of history have led observers to see clear distinctions between the two platforms. University IT executives, staff and student developers may want to consider these five areas when evaluating Java versus .NET.

Momentum

According to Gartner's report, .NET's numbers will come in application deployments with fewer than 100 concurrent users, while the Java platform will be the choice for those with more than 100 concurrent users. It's not surprising, then, given the enterprise focus, that both individual developers and major IT vendors have been highly motivated to participate in the Java Community Process (JCP), which has over 850 participants. The JCP is an open organization chartered with the development of Java technology. This robust, broad-based community is working hard to drive continuous, rapid improvement in the vision and reality of Java technology. Both large companies, such as IBM, Oracle, BEA, and Sun, and many individuals, invest their time and resources driving Java's evolution.

Microsoft is using its immense resources to push .NET into the market, but it remains doubtful that any one company, no matter how influential, can match the entire Java industry of leading IT vendors, a very active open source community, and millions of developers worldwide. Java is ubiquitous, found in nearly a billion Java smart cards and over 600 million mobile phones worldwide.

Choice and Innovation

Because no one company controls the Java platform, it has spawned an entire ecosystem of successful products, service providers, advanced technologies, and communities such as Java Architecture Special Interest Group (JA-SIG), made up a hundreds of universities worldwide, helping each other and creating education-oriented functionality such as uPortal. Choice in platform, tools, technologies and business models makes it easier and less expensive to switch vendors, lower costs and gain new capabilities.

Since Java technology is open, defined by a community, vendors compete on implementations, fostering rapid innovation and seamless interoperability. The JCP organization promotes the best of open standards, and in only six years, has spawned three complete versions of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE platform), three complete versions of Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE platform), and two versions of the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME platform) for mobile applications. Universities, students, and developers are the ultimate beneficiaries of this customer-focused approach.

With Java technology, schools have a choice of:

• Advanced development tools, such as Sun's Java Studio Creator and commercial tools like jBuilder from Borland and WebLogic Workshop from BEA, as well as several open source tools and environments, many from academia.
• A wide range of compatible, open source Java technology solutions from leading community development efforts, including Eclipse and NetBeans IDEs, jBoss, JOnAS, and Apache Geronimo application servers.
• Innovative web services and XML-based integration solutions based on JAX and JBI standards.
• Both established and leading edge technologies, including peer-to-peer with JXTA technology, discover and self-organization with Jini technology and client/server and message-oriented middleware such as CORBA, RMI, and JMS.

Maturity

Now in its second decade, the Java platform is a mature, proven framework for development and deployment of some of the best-known Internet-enabled applications in the world. The Java platform has proven more robust, easier to maintain, and more secure than earlier languages. The object-oriented design principles make it easier for schools to more quickly build applications with the right level of performance, scalability, mobility and availability, and with fewer bugs.

Unlike .NET, the Java platform's virtual machine architecture is inherently secure with its customizable "sandboxes" for protected execution. Security is built-in, not added on with patches and service packs. Java runtime environments are available on a wide range of hardware and operating systems. Microsoft's .NET runs only on Windows, a product with a long, unenviable record of attacks, vulnerabilities, and security problems. Java technology's cross-platform compatibility also makes it ideal for cost-effectively dealing with regulatory and compliance requirements facing an increasing number of universities.

Investment Protection

More university and primary and secondary school administrators are now embracing the concept of total cost of ownership (TCO) over the life of the investment, recognizing the impact of support costs, license renewals, and other expenditures not reflected in the initial acquisition cost. Total return on investment (ROI) for a services solution is highly dependent on how long an institution can leverage it in the face of constantly changing technology. The Java platform protects school's investments and interests in many ways that Microsoft's single vendor, proprietary .NET platform cannot:

• Coding in a single cross-platform language leverages skills and investment in developer training and helps developers adapt flexibly to different business needs.
• Java language design principles result in less error-prone, modular, and more easily maintained software that can be leveraged and re-purposed.
• Software investments are safer, if there is a need to deploy on tomorrow's technology and platforms, because Java technology is widely adopted. Advanced capabilities, from web services to mobile platforms and peer-to-peer networks, all are available as part of the Java platform.
• With cross-platform Java technology, schools are not locked in to any vendor through the entire system stack, protecting investments in development should you need to switch suppliers.
• Broad adoption and the creative energy of millions of developers and hundreds of leading IT vendors drives the vibrant, robust Java technology ecosystem — adding value and preserving your investment in Java technology.

Microsoft takes a totally opposite approach to investment protection with .NET which includes many languages, most of which reflect less safe design principles, one operating system/hardware platform with no vendor choice or leverage, dependence on a single company for innovation, and both source and binary incompatibilities from version to version.

Lower Costs

One might assume that a platform as robust, versatile, supported, and secure as Java would cost more than a more limited proprietary product. Actually just the opposite is true, especially in the education market. The same commodity hardware that runs Windows and the .NET environment also runs the Java platform.

Additionally, with Linux and Solaris x86 technology, operating system licenses and client access fees can be reduced or eliminated. Through the Sun EduSoft program, students, faculty, administrators and researchers can download Java and other Sun software free of charge. Java technology can also be downloaded for free at www.java.com. High quality, open source tools and frameworks like Eclipse and NetBeans software are also freely available.

Many of the advantages of the Java platform covered here have a direct impact on lowering TCO for education and research institutions, including:

• Lower software maintenance costs
• Lower developer training costs
• Availability on platforms including low-cost or free operating systems, such as Linux and Solaris
• Technology and tools available for free download
• Lower costs through "backed-in security by design"
• Better negotiation leverage
• Investment protection through backward compatibility and Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) integration for legacy applications.

At Sun, we recognize that IT decisions are often complex. Cutting through conflicting vendor claims to discern the truth about cost, investment protection, and flexibility is critical to making the right decision. It's clear that the Java platform provides better value in each of these areas. Sun will continue to lead the Java community, foster innovation, provide world-class environments for Java applications and earn your trust as an open, reliable, scalable web service infrastructure provider.

For more information on Java technology, visit http://java.sun.com/, contact education_news@sun.com or click here to have your local Sun representative contact you.