Sun Microsystems Pulls Off a Hat Trick with Complete Java EE 6 Solution

| Dec 14, 2009 | Application Infrastructure | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Brad Shimmin

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Very High
Market Impact: High

Event Summary

December 10, 2009 - Sun Microsystems announced the availability of the Java Platform Enterprise Edition 6 (Java EE 6) and significant industry support from Java technology licensees including Caucho, IBM, Oracle and Red Hat. Sun also announced the availability of the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 6.8, the first IDE to provide complete support for the Java EE 6. And the company announced the immediate availability of Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v3, the latest release of Sun's commercial Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application server and its open source counterpart, GlassFish v3.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Sun's synchronized release of Java Platform Enterprise Edition 6 (Java EE 6), NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 6.8 and GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 (and its accompanying open source counterpart, GlassFish v3). These indicate that Sun has learned from past issues surrounding uncoordinated release cycles for interdependent products. Sun has delivered a coordinated cadre of tools (SDK, development tool and execution environments) in a very timely fashion that will help the company jumpstart interest in and foster support for Java EE 6 with both customers and ISV partners.

• Vendor Importance: Very high to Sun, given the company's continuing financial troubles stemming from the European Commission's request for a hearing (currently underway) on Oracle's proposed acquisition. Despite these issues, Sun has demonstrated its ability to conduct business as usual amidst very difficult circumstances. More importantly, Sun has proven that it can continue as the caretaker of the ubiquitous Java programming language, moving this important standard forward even in conjunction with its rivals, which have a stake in Java.

• Market Impact: High on the entire application infrastructure marketplace, owing primarily to the sheer technological gravity imposed by Java. While lightweight scripting languages and subsets of Java have garnered a great deal of press recently, Java remains the driving force behind most SOA installations. As such, Sun's work as the Spec Lead of the Java EE 6 specification within the Java Community Process (JCP) program does more to stabilize the entire market than create market opportunities for Sun relative to the competition. That said, Sun's continuing efforts in maturing its NetBeans development tool and GlassFish Java application server in support of Java EE 6 do give the company "first mover" status in the marketplace.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

| Client access - Full report in Application Infrastructure | More information

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Given the current unrest surrounding Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun, rivals of both Sun and Oracle should position this release as an exercise in engineering, not as a product release that will result in significant competitive opportunities for Sun. As has been borne out by Sun's financials over the past nine months, potential customers are not willing to fully bet on either Oracle's ability to see the acquisition through or Sun's ability to continue on its own, should the acquisition fall through.

• Rivals employing non-Java development environments (most notably Microsoft) and subsets of the Java standard (Apache and VMware/SpringSource) should position the introduction of Profiles within Java EE 6 as an admission that the platform has become so sweeping that it has lost its way and is no longer consumable in its entirety.

• Similarly, rivals should call attention to the fact that the Java standard has been slow to emerge. It was originally proposed in 2007 and expected to pass in 2008. More importantly, despite its maturity, the finalization of the Java EE 6 standard has been not been without dissent and controversy. For example, the standard was voted into effect despite a number of key abstaining and "no" votes from committee members such as SAP and Apache surrounding licensing concerns that leave too much control over Java's business models within Sun's hands.

• Rivals with Java application server products should promote the fact that Sun has yet to finalize GlassFish Enterprise Server v3, relative to that product's predecessor. The company, for example, has not yet released a high availability database (HADB) rendition with five nines of session availability and load balancing. Rivals should also call attention to the fact that in order to obtain full use of Sun's Enterprise manager in support of the application server, customers must purchase GlassFish Portfolio Gold and Platinum subscriptions.

• Red Hat should point out that Sun does not have the inside track on delivering capabilities found within the Java EE 6 specification. Red Hat delivered a number of Java EE 6 features within JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5.0, for example, fully supports the Java EE 5 specification as well as some functionality from the forthcoming Java EE 6 specification.

• IBM and SAP, despite their licensing concerns surrounding the Java EE 6 standard, should move quickly to embrace the new language standard. Java is and shows all signs of remaining the de facto standard for enterprise application development (particularly within SOA environments), and both IBM and SAP have demonstrated their ability and willingness to quickly adopt Java EE 5 in the past, establishing a level of expectation among their user communities. Moving quickly with Java EE 6 will also position these vendors more favorably opposite Oracle, Red Hat, MuleSoft, Software AG, Progress Software and VMware/SpringSource, all of which are dedicated to the Java standard.

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• Existing GlassFish Enterprise Server v2 customers should welcome the v3 update on its technical merits, specifically additional capabilities surrounding OSGi modularity, Java EE 6 support as well as other usability and productivity improvements. Sun has also worked to make the migration from v2 to v3 seamless both technically (upgrade tools, code tests, etc.) and financially (customers with existing support contracts can upgrade without an increase in cost).

• Existing Sun customers employing Java EE 5 should consider adopting Java EE 6, as the vendor has for the first time released a coordinated cadre of supporting applications necessary to begin utilizing the new Java standard throughout the full application lifecycle, ranging from development to deployment. The vendor has has also released tools that will assist in ensuring backwards compatibility for applications written using Java EE 5.

• Potential customers interested in utilizing Sun's freely available, open source, community rendition of GlassFish Enterprise Server v3 (marketed as Sun GlassFish v3) should note that in terms of running applications, the bits between the two versions are identical and that GlassFish v3 users can update to the enterprise edition using Sun's administration console. However, GlassFish v3 users should be aware that fixes will not be issued with the same frequency as is the case with the enterprise edition (which employs frequent patches), creating functional disparity between the two versions at any given time.

• Potential customers with an investment in Sun software should consider Sun's NetBeans IDE 6.8 as an alternative to Eclipse-based Java IDEs. This version is technically mature, deeply integrated into Sun's runtime environments and capable working with more than just the Java development language. It already supported the Groovy/Grails scripting language/framework as well as other scripting tools (most notably PHP) and compiled languages like C/C++, but with version 6.8, the product has been built to fully handle Sun's rich Internet application development language and platform, JavaFX.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

| Client access - Full report in Application Infrastructure | More information

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