People and Technology

I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t think it was going to be as bad as this. And personally, I’m disgusted at bailing out the banks. The same banks that threw suitcases of cash at the housing developers that made first time buyers life hell during the boom years.

The first problem – it’s a bailout but people are pretending it’s not real money
Ah-hah, you say – it’s not really a bailout. The state is guaranteeing the deposits in banks (some Euro 400 Bn worth, or 300,000 Euro for every taxpayer in the country) – but no money has changed hands. What a stroke by the Paddys - not.

No money has changed hands - ‘yet’. Experience in the US (who have been through this  a couple of times in recent decades) suggests that 20% of the loan book will go bad. Because of gearing banks can lend out far more money than it takes in deposits, so 20% of bad loans = a lot more than 20% of our deposits needing rescued.

If the banks were hunky-dory, then why are other banks refusing to lend to them? Why couldn’t they go to their shareholders for more funds (like Royal Bank of Scotland did in recent months, raising 12 Billon Sterling)? And if these two groups (who know far more about banking than I or the average taxpayer does) are refusing to lend, then why should we? Fear is one factor, but fear is normally there for a good reason.

The second problem: Meet the new boss of the six largest banks in the country.

 I’m sure Mr Lenihan is a fine man, competent and full of integrity. He’s got a good CV – politician, lawyer, family man. Strange that – no mention of banking on his CV.

The new boss of Irish banks – minister for finance Brian Lenihan - image from Agent Provocateur

If the state is underwriting the banks, then they’ll be kept on such a short leash that they can’t go to the toilet without asking permission. And if they’re not being kept on a short leash, then why not – that’s 300 grand of my money that they’re playing with. So Mr Lenihan, as the person making the guarantee, is now the ultimate boss of not one, but six Irish banks.

Bit of a dilemma there: Who will run the Banks the best? The current management who made the loans to developers that got us into this mess? Or a politician without any banking experience (although I’m sure he’s learning fast)? Answers in the comments section at the bottom please.

The third problem: Moral Hazard

When we get through this and growth starts again (and despite my pessimism, we will get through this pain, with Ireland coming out in a competitive position) we now have a problem; The very same bankers that we are now supporting / bailing out will start making loans again. And making risky loans, knowing that the state will (probably) bail them out if they fail. So the state intervention now means that Mr Lenihan and his successor politicians will be regulating the heart of the banking system for years to come.

And who do you think will win? Well intentioned regulators on a fixed salary, or highly paid highly motivated bankers who get paid bonuses for finding new ways of bending the rules?

The finale

Can we roll out all the estate agents / politicians / brokers / other talking heads that popped up on TV predicting a ‘soft landing’? Yep, the same ones that critisied those who dared sound a warning as unpatriotic and ‘talking down the economy’?

(Tumbleweed)

Do I have any better answers? No. But it would be good to stop pretending that this bank rescue carries no cost to the Irish Taxpayer.

Update: Actually , this thing might  be cost free - but in a beggar-my-neighbour kind of way. Loads of capital is flowing into Irish Banks and out of UK and European Financial institutions. Great for Irish banks (loads of lovely money to fund existing loans), but I can’t see the other countries being too happy about it if the withdrawals cause a collapse there. Still, it will stop them complaining about our low 12.5% corporate tax rate.

Don’t you hate it when you spend months (or years) working on a pet project / book / mad take over the world idea, then somebody comes out with something even better?

Yep, it’s just happened to me. Years working on the idea of the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ (even prior to web 2.0 in the shape of Red-Piranha). Month’s working on a Masters Dissertation on applying Web 2 techniques to the Finance industry (pdf link). And somebody comes out and does it even better.

Not just better. But much much better.  The sort of better as in ‘If I had this earlier, I’d have just copied it and changed the words around a bit’. The book is available from Manning as ‘Collective Intelligence in Action‘. A free, first chapter (Understanding Collective Intelligence) is available here (pdf).

So what’s it about? We’ve all heard about the Wisdom of Crowds idea. But what if you need to actually implement it on your website? This book shows you how to (using both concepts and practical code, as well as the theory behind all of it that I was missing). It includes

• Intelligent, learning search, using Lucene.
• Extracting data from blogs using web-crawling.
• Executing Real time feedback on facebook-like sites.
• Scalable data-mining techniques to manage the torrent of information
• Making personalised recommendations based on all of the information.

Disclaimer:Manning provided me with a free review copy of the book - but no strings attached. And , maybe if I’m nice enough to the Author (Satnam), I can persuade him to talk about making millions using JBoss Drools and Complex Event processing in the book.

No apologies for over simplifying this :

1. If you’re in business you need computer systems to support your team. Systems to find previous dealings with a customer, systems to allow your team to work together, systems to stop people finding out things that they shouldn’t.
2. Once your business passes the 100 employee mark and is heading for ‘Enterprise’ scale, chances are you need custom software written just for you, in addition to he ’shrink wrap’ stuff you’ve been able to get away with until now.
3. Most custom Enterprise software is written in (or uses a large element of) Enterprise Java.
4. Enterprise Java is hard to get started with - it’s a big and complex framework because it solves big and complex problems. The Spring framework makes it easy.

OK, so we’re Spring nuts. But nuts only because it’s solved problems for FirstPartners over the last 4 years. What we like:

• Spring allows you to use just enough Enterprise Java to solve your problem
• Spring complements Enterprise Java, not replaces it.
• Spring gives you a gentle slope to using Enterprise technologies.
• Spring works well with Java, Oracle, .Net , (J)Ruby and pretty much any mainstream technology - including most of the widespread Java Frameworks like Struts and Hibernate.

So you wait ages for one Spring Event in Ireland, then two come along at once. We’ve written about Rod Johnson speaking in Dublin on Tue March 11th. Now there is a full day Spring Event in Belfast the day before (March 10th). And it’s sponsored by Momentum NI, so it’s free. And the Hilton Hotel is right beside Belfast Central train station, so it’s easy to get to from Dublin.

The full agenda is here (more details below), but given the importance of Spring to the Enterprise world, and the fact that the top four Spring guys are speaking, we reckon that it the Enterprise event of the year. The booking form is here.

Spring Ireland 2008

Start: 10th March 08:30 End: 10th March 17:30
Hilton Belfast, 4 Lanyon Place, Belfast (Beside Central Train station) SpringSource is proud to announce Spring Ireland 2008. Join us for a free one-day conference with presentations from the SpringSource team including a keynote from Rod Johnson.

Keynote: Spring into the Future - Rod Johnson

The Spring Framework began in 2002 with Rod’s best-selling Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development; one of the most influential books ever published on J2EE, Rod is recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities on Java and J2EE development.With the rapid expansion of SpringSource and move to new corporate HQ in Silicon Valley, this is a rare UK opportunity to hear Rod provide his views and explore the future of J2EE application development.

What’s New in Spring 2.5 - Sam Brannen

Sam is a lead architect at SpringSource and one of the most experienced developers within the organisation.This session provides delegates with an overview of the new features available in Spring 2.5. Specifically, highlighting the simplified and extensible configuration support provided via configuration annotations and new XML configuration namespaces, new Java 6 support, updates to Spring AOP, improved JDBC and JPA support, annotation-driven web MVC controllers, the new annotation-based TestContext framework for unit and integration tests and more!

SpringSource Professional Services – Greg Southey

Greg has built SpringSource’s UK Professional Services organisation into the leading Spring consultancy business in the world.

This is a brief resume of some of the 97 major projects completed by the UK Professional Services team in 2007. Delegates will hear about the business drivers behind some major development projects, the business issues faced and how they were resolved in partnership with the client.

Spring as a Full Stack Web Framework - David Syer

As Principal Consultant at SpringSource, Dave leads the way in the understanding of satisfying business requirements using the Spring Portfolio. His easy manner cloaks a prodigious knowledge of application development.

This session explores the “full stack” web framework trend and answers the question: how does Spring stack up? This session defines what a full-stack web framework is, then provides a fair technical comparison between a Spring-centric web development stack and the alternatives. Delegates will head about the feature-set of modern “full stack” web frameworks, and what Spring has that differentiates itself from the pack.

Spring in Ireland – Ian Graham

Ian Graham, Momentum, will explore the use of Spring in Ireland and introduce case studies from companies who are using the Spring family of products.

Round Table Discussion - Rod Johnson, Rob Harrop, Dave Syer, Sam Brannen & Greg Southey

Your chance to ask Rod and his team anything that’s on your mind regarding Spring!

From a Random Walk Blog, talking about the Irish Property Market. Stats come from the Irish Property Watch Website.

Assuming no new properties are listed and properties continue to go Sale Agreed/Withdrawn at the current rate then there is currently 11 months supply on the market.

Wonder what EastMeath.org makes of it all?

What you do if you weren’t doing your current job? While we all harbour dreams of running a magically profitable coffeeshop, working only 3 hours a day, what would you really do if you wanted a change of career?

If I wasn’t in IT , I’d be in Finance, on the basis of …

• My original degree is in Business (with French). Somehow I got seduced into IT (you don’t hear that very often).
• Both Finance and IT require their own set of knowledge and expertise. Once you’ve acquired that expertise, the work can be quite profitable, as not everybody can do it.
• Both are quite strong employment areas within Ireland, with the IFSC being one of the easiest parts of Dublin to get to from Drogheda (think Trains).

Sadly (but very sanely), neither Finance nor IT is considered ’sexy’. There again, you can’t have everything. They’re both quite hard to explain to your Mum - as far as she’s concerned , I work ‘in computers’. This is akin to lumping Salesmen , Mechanics, road sweepers and Michael Schumacher in a category ’something to do with cars’.

However , this lead-in does explain the contents of the ‘what’s Paul Reading?’ list. All links are to Amazon. I’d recommend all the books with the exception of the last one - it was written by a newspaper journalist and the slightly jingoistic style reflects this.

1. Economist : The City - a guide to London’s Global Financial Centre
2. Freakonomics
3. Java security
4. How the City Really works

I don’t slag people off on this blog. If I’m annoyed enough to talk about people in public, then I should at least talk to them privately first. Up until now, that’s been good enough to resolve most things.

So for Dolan and Company / CMR Accountants to get the honour of being critisied in public, they must have behaved pretty badly. Yes, they’re the ones located at the Steelworks in Foley Street Dublin (near Busaras, Connolly Train station). They’re now our Ex-Accountants, for reasons that will soon become clear.

Dolan and Co were our company accountants from Dec 03 until Mar 06. We’re not the biggest of companies. Our accounts could probably be done using Excel by somebody with a Leaving Certificate qualification. We prefer to subcontract rather than employ people, so that makes our accounts even easier.

So what have Dolan done to annoy us so much?

Overcharging. We had a set monthly fee for their services, paid by direct debit. Easy enough? Even if a mistake was made, it shouldn’t be too hard to sort out. Well no actually. During the last 15 months of our arrangement, I spent more time on the phone to Dolan / CMR about the fees than talking to them about the actual accounting service. While I wasn’t happy at the end, Dolan agreed to refund me a set figure in March last year and I moved to another accountants.

End of story, or so I thought. Not nice, but not enough reason to blog about it.

Ok, so how have they really annoyed you?

The basic reason to have an accountant is to file accounts with the Revenue Commisionars (Government Tax Department). These accounts / reports are (i) How much money you take as Salary from the business and (ii) How much VAT you owe the Government (based on your Sales).

Not surprisingly, the government takes a very dim view if you don’t file these accounts / reports on time. Fortunately , they’re easy enough, so long as you keep on top of them. For example, you can pay your Tax every month by Direct Debit. At the end of the year, you file a final report and pay any (small amount due).

Here’s the problem. For 2005 , Dolan / CMR set up a the Direct Debit but did not make the final report. This is despite assuring me that that the return had been made when we signed off the accounts at the end of the Year. (You know who you are). While I do not owe any tax (because we paid by DD monthly), the Revenue are entitled to fine me several thousand.

My new accountants say it will take them about 5 minutes to complete and post via the web (the ROS.ie website).

I will accept a large part of the blame for this - after all it is me , not the accountants, that they Revenue Commissionars will chase. But if you (a) are paying a professional service company to do work and (b) they tell you that this (basic) work has been carried out, would you not be annoyed to find out that it hadn’t?

I’ve left the comments section open for Dolan / CMR to reply if they see fit.

Thanks to Martin Boylan and Co (Drogheda) , our new Accountants, who are helping tidy up this mess.

Or to be more accurate ‘Google Spreadsheets mean the end of Java as we know it’.

Think about this. Who pays your wages Mr Java-Developer-who-has-just-had-a-couple-of-years-at-the-top-of-the-pile? Clients, or if you’re in a larger organisation , the business folks (i.e.’internal’ clients). Do you think any of them care about Java? Do any of them know what Java is? All they want is to get things done, quickly , and with as few mistakes as possible.

These business people would be happy to run their organisations on Spreadsheets. Do you remember the cartoon where Dilbert convinced the pointy haired boss that he could fly the plane using Excel? There’s more than a element of truth to this. I know of at least one US Fortune 100 company that (until recently) conducted most of it’s operations on little more than Microsoft Office and duct-tape. It worked, not very well, but it worked.

Until now , the next line would be ‘Excel (or any other type of Spreadsheet) is not secure / scalable / sharable / not web friendly’. That was until Google launched their Docs and Speadsheets. It’s an online version of Office with some spreadsheet functionality. Play with it a bit and you’ll see that there’s plenty missing. But this being Google , I’m willing to put good money on

• (a) new features rolled out (think steamroller) and
• (b) These Spreadsheets being massivly scalable / secure / sharable.

This being Google, there is also an API (developer page here). It’s got massive holes in it (e.g. you can’t yet use it to create a new spreadsheet). But when Microsoft bring out their version of online spreadsheets (and they will) not only will they clone the Google API (to get market share), they’ll need to go one further and introduce new features / remove the usage restrictions in order to compete.

So, secure, scalable, sharble online spreadsheets are here to stay. So lets take a look at Mr. (or Ms.) Pointy haired boss thinking about their new project:

1. Hmm, I think we need to be able to gather which health plans our employees are enrolled in.
2. OK, I’ll throw together a spreadsheet to show people what I want
3. Before I’ll give to our friendly Java developer and let him ‘do’ a website from it.
   Soon I’ll just share this on Google.
4. Great , Loads of people are now using it, I’ll just the (Ruby / PHP / Insert other language here) guy to add one or two extra features.
5. Most Excellent. Why don’t we spin this off as a Web 2 company and sell it to EBay??

There you have it, Massively scalable , Highly secure websites (see Google Authentication API), without needing to know anything about EJB, JMX , JBoss, JDBC or any of the hard won knowledge that us Enterprise Java Developers have built up over the last 7-8 years. I’m exaggerating, but not much.

What do you think? Is Enterprise Java dead, or is Web 2 just another boost and a slightly different way of doing things for us Java people?

Other Java Posts from Technology in Plain English

Some other notes:

• Java is read once , run almost anywhere. The ‘Almost’ is because (for various technical reasons) the difficulty in getting reasonably priced web hosting. Have your tried getting some recently - impossible to find , or at least impossible to find at the prices PHP and Ruby guys can get theirs?
• Tim O’Reilly with was right with the notion of Web 2.0 and the network as a computer. We’ve also written about the notion of online software being at a tipping point.

This article was originally published on the O’Reilly books OnJava Website.

Imagine writing an ‘I owe you’ note that people would accept them for whatever you wanted - in pubs , as payment for your car , or even as a downpayment on a property in Dublin 4. In your dreams , imagine that people trusted you enough that they would then use your IOU’s in shops as payment. This is even better, as people now want more of your IOU’s, so you can write even more of them and get even more free stuff.

This is fantastic - you’ve got a massive free loan. Best of all many of these IOUs will get lost behind the sofa or eaten by the cat so you’ll never have to pay them back. Free money. The situation is not so absurd as it seems : The 50 Euro note in your pocket is an IOU from the Irish (and other European) governments. Technically we can reclaim payment, but what would be paid in?

What has sparked this ‘free money’ post is the news from the Financial times is that the Euro has edged out the US Dollar as the international IOU of choice. Given that the Irish Government is allowed to issue a fixed percentage of the Euro in circulation, the Irish Government now has even more money in it’s coffers ahead of the next election.

If you remember Applets, then you are so 1990’s man. Right back before the dot-com boom , everybody was putting these Java programs in their web pages to do things simple things like display a financial chart (guilty as charged , my ‘lud). Oracle still uses them in some versions of it’s applications as a half-way house between it’s older desktop applications and a completely web only solution.

Fast forward to 2006 and these ‘heavy’ applets have been replaced by light web pages using Ajax and Flash, which don’t require a user download to run. Pretty much anything a Java Applet can do can be done in Ajax (if you have enough time and patience). Ajax developers have been pretty inventive in using Flash to solve problems (e.g. allowing web pages to store information on your local PC), so it may only be a matter of time before this gets picked up.
It’s ironic then, that the very technology that is meant to replace it , ends up giving Applets a new lease of life. It won’t suit everybody or every problem. An ‘ideal’ problem for this to solve is where the user interaction, business logic or security requirements are at the ‘higher’ end of the scale. While you could solve it using Ajax (basically javascript on steroids), using Java Applets and having a nice IDE to develop and solve your problems in may pay off in the long run.

Jan of Trampoline Systems explains in more detail.

On a recent client project, we ended writing more than 300 business rules to reflect some of the financial decision making that they applied to an application (excuse me if I’m being suitably vauge with this). Many of these rules would be shared across applications. The rules engine used was the Java based JBoss rules engine (formerly known as Drools).

Obviously , these rules need to be stored somewhere. Most large organisations are comfortable with the idea of using a Database such as Oracle or Sql-Server to carry out this task. This article , for version 2 of Drools but also applicable to the latest release, shows you how to use a database to store your business rules.

No matter what your system does , be it insurance , banking , online travel booking or telecoms, the chances are it does the following things:

• Gets information from users over the web
• Does some business processing on that information
• Saves the information in a database.

At a conservative estimate , about 99% of Enterprise systems would fall into this category.

If so, why do you need an architect , when you can use our ‘one size fits all’ architecture diagram (below)?! Most non-trivial systems, regardless of the language they are written in (be it Java, .Net , or your language of choice) follow the pattern seen in this diagram.

3 Tier Enterprise Diagram

There are 3 Pieces to the Solution:

• Web Browser (for the user / client).
• Web and Application Server - carry out business logic.
• Database Back End - to store data and ensure data integrity.

Within the Application Server (the middle bit above, which as Java Architects is the bit we are interested in), there are a further 3 tiers

• A Presentation tier (or layer), which is mainly about talking to the user (it gets and sends requests to the web browser).
• A Service layer , which is mainly about talking to back end such as databases, legacy systems (such as mainframes) and XML-Web services that we may use.
• A Business layer, the ‘meat’ of the sandwich, where the ‘Value add’ is in terms of business processing and validation.

For each of these layers , your priority in building them are slightly different.

• The Presentation layer is the bit the user sees. You want it to be fast and give a good impression to the client. Underneath, use a standard framework (link: pick your framework here) and then customize the look and feel.
• The Service layer you want to work fast and well (e.g. no data faults), but then then forget about. Unless things go wrong, no user is going to complement you on the quality of database persistence! Use standard libraries for the entire layer.
• Unless your company is a clone or franchise, the business layer in the system is going to be completely different. Aside from the user-interface , concentrate most of your project effort here as this is the core of what system does. We’ve written quite a bit about how to increase the value-add of the business layer (link to O’Reilly Technical Articles)

By the way , we’re only half-joking about the ‘why do you need an architect’ bit. We can be contacted here.

It now seems obvious that the Healthcare Payroll system was destined to fail. If you were working on the project, I’m sure it felt very differently at the time. How can your projects avoid a similar fate? While IT may sometimes seem disconnected from reality, the following guidelines show that ‘Real World’ lessons still apply.

1. Know what you want and stick to it. If you’re building a house and change the plans several times the builder is going to fleece you, no matter how low the initial quote was. The same goes for IT Projects - if you change your mind after the price is agreed, you’re going to pay more.
2. If you don’t know what you’re doing , find a friend who does. I know very little about houses, so when I was buying my own I got a friendly surveyor to check it out. With IT projects, this ‘friend’ should be genuinely on your side, and have something to lose (e.g. financial or reputation) if things go wrong.
3. Little and often is better. Like exercise, smaller projects that deliver results little but early are best. If the results are good, try a second (and third) round to add more functionality based on the feedback from users.
4. It’s been all done before. Tailored suits cost a lot more than ready-made ones - and most people are happy with a ‘Good enough’ instead of ‘Perfect fit’. There are literally thousands of ‘off-the-peg’ computer systems out there ready for final alteration to what you need.
5. If you don’t understand the answer, ask more questions. Thankfully the days we sat and nodded at the Doctor’s Latin words are long gone. IT Consultants may sometimes speak a different language, but if they can’t explain what they’re talking about in English that you understand, the chances are they’re trying to hide something.
6. Don’t build on sand. Like houses , projects need good foundations. For IT Projects , the good foundations are sound knowledge of the Business Processes being coded into the system. Changing processes and changing IT systems at the same time is like building on sand.
7. Sometimes the tortoise wins the race. Unless your entire business model is built around being the very first to market, then being a tortoise and letting others race ahead has very big advantages. Not only can you learn from other people’s mistakes, but the chances are you’ll get it at a much reduced cost - For example websites now cost a fraction of what they did during the dot.com boom.
8. Use a safety net. When building houses, often the first thing to go up is scaffolding, for safety reasons. The equivalent safety net in IT is called ‘Unit Tests’. Not only do they help you get there faster, but they let you know if you’ve broken something you’ve already built.
9. Be a good poker player. Good poker players never give away valuable cards. For IT projects, owning all cards mean just that - make sure that you have full rights to the solution so that you can still move tables and use a different supplier. Even if you never make the move, knowing that you can is an effective bargaining chip.

And finally …

When you are in a hole, stop digging. The decision to call a halt to the projects was no doubt a difficult one, and is to be applauded. Too often, the temptation is to keep on going and hope things will turn out right. Recognising problems at an early stage means there is more chance of being able to fix them.

Like 99% of PC users, you probably have Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint installed on your PC. To get a copy of Microsoft Office you either:

• Paid about 400 Euro to get a legitimate copy.
• Got a copy from a ‘friend of a friend’.

While I’m no advocate of Microsoft, I think the 2nd option is wrong. It’s illegal and it’s theft by another name - either you want Microsoft Office enough to pay the money, however outrageous,
or you don’t and you have free choice to walk away. It’s also stupid, as there are good, low cost (or free) alternatives out there.

Some alternatives to Microsoft Office are listed below (and this ZDNet article lists some more). Given that most users only scratch the surface of available features, each of these is a ‘good enough’ replacement for Word, Excel , Powerpoint and in some cases , Access.

• StarOffice - from Sun Microsystems , available for about 50 Euro.
• OpenOffice - an open version of StarOffice , slightly more ‘techie’ but available for free.
• ThinkFree - an alternative to office that runs within your web browser (like Internet Explorer)

Why are these so much cheaper? It just shows how much profit Microsoft is making from it’s Office suite when products of a similar quality are available for a 10th of the price.

So should you switch? Realistically , you have 3 options:

1. If budget is important and you as a decision maker can push through the implementation, then go for either Star Office or Open Office. While these have every feature users need, they look just slightly different. If you can encourage users to give them a try for the first few days, then they’ll never want to go back.

   An example (heard 3rd hand) was a well known hospital in Dublin that tried , and failed to switch. The problem was that senior officers did not want to make the effort to change.

2. If budgets are not a problem or if you use the extremely advanced features like macros, then stick to Microsoft office. If you don’t know what a Macro is, then chances are that you are not using them.
3. Keep on using your illegal copy. You might have got away with it until now, but expect Microsoft to come after you as their (previously spectacular) revenue growth comes under pressure.

Go for either Option 1 or 2. For Option 3, expect Microsoft to offer increased incentives for employees to let the cat out of the bag, as well as new technical initiatives (building on the ‘Genuine Windows’ program to sniff you out. You have been warned.

Wired Magazine are running an interesting
article on day traders that are using automated PC applications to carry out
their stock trades.

As a co-incidence, an article I wrote for O’Reilly shows just How to build
an automated Stock and FX trading system.

If you’re looking for a system to make you millions playing the stock and
foreign exchange markets while you sleep, my contact details are above!

When SAP announced that they were migrating their solution to a full J2EE server stack, I was initially sceptical. While it makes good business sense (after all Enterprise Java server’s are now effectively free), and complemented their decision to open source the SAP DB (now known as Max DB), there was still a niggling feeling at the back of my mind.

Why? Well over the years we’ve learnt a lot of lessons of how to build Scalable Java applications. Even then, some people can’t seem to get it right (No names , but you know who you are). How would SAP people (who I have a lot of respect for as you don’t get to the position SAP is within the industry without getting at least something right) react to this strange new Java world. Would they shed all past baggage and dive in with the enthusiasm of College Graduates? Or would they take a ‘not invented here’ attitude and hack together something in Java along the lines of what they were used to.

I suspected the latter , and fully expected to end up cleaning up some mess of a CRM or ERM system. However, I am pleasently surprised with SAP’s Java Website. On a pure Java level, it approaches the efforts from Oracle , IBM and BEA. If SAP are making this amount of effort to promote Java best practice, then there may be hope after all.

Final question: If this goes the way SAP is planning, at what point does it’s installed base get counted as part of the Market share of J2EE servers. What percentage of the market would it have? A healthy and very profitable 10%? Certainly the strategy (and the Market share) is very close to Oracle , which also bundles it’s (10g) App server with it’s main product (a Database rather than a CRM or ERP Solution).