Java Vs .Net: Battleground India

Given its open-standards approach, India is natural Java country. But Microsoft's .Net platform is gaining ground

Not many people in Chennai "� or elsewhere "� have heard of a company called C G Maersk. It's a joint venture between Crompton Greaves and Maersk Data of Denmark and it develops applications for the next generation of mobile phones.

Working on cutting edge technologies, C G Maersk claims to be the first company in the world to provide Internet Protocol (IP)-based software services in a 3G environment for a UK telecom company.

The applications developed form part of next-gen mobile handsets like the Ericsson P800 and Nokia 3650. Besides, C G Maersk is also working on technologies like PTT (push-to-talk), which provides one-to-one or one-to-many voice services similar to a walkie-talkie.

Software developers at the Chennai-based company swear by Java, a versatile programming language developed by Sun Microsystems.

"Using a language like Java for developing mobile applications helps us address a large business universe because of its open standards and ability to integrate with any operating system," says Ashoke Ghosh, CEO, CG Maersk.

Ghosh's statement is evidence that Java is making a huge comeback, riding the growth in mobile and PDA markets.

A recently published Gartner report states that Java is currently the fastest-growing programming environment in the world, marking a turnaround for Java vendors and developers.

After the dotcom crash, the Java community went into partial hibernation, leading many to doubt Java's worth as a sensible career option. The past eight to nine months have seen a revival in demand for Java professionals.

The tell-tale signs of its resurgence are already there "� more than 120 Java-enabled mobile handset models, close to 275 million PCs running Java technology.

In the last five months, Sun Microsystems has reported more than six million downloads of its Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Java Developers Kit 1.1.

So is Java king? Well, not so fast. Not as long as there is a gentleman called Bill Gates. With a complete lock on the desktop market, Microsoft has more than a window of opportunity. It's offering, called .Net (dotnet), borrows some of the best ideas of Java but tailors them to the advantage of Windows.

While .Net may lack a clear technology advantage over Java, no one "should underestimate the power of the Windows franchise and Microsoft's marketing abilities," says Praveen Kankariya, president and CEO of Impetus Technologies Inc, a Silicon Valley-based software research and development, engineering and related services provider. Impetus's developers work with both Java and .Net.

Conscious of the developer community's slight bias in favour of Java, Microsoft has been working overtime to woo the Indian developer community.

Microsoft already operates a .Net centre in Bangalore which helps software companies port and stress-test their applications.

It also undertakes "deep developer training" and 10 Indian companies "� including the Big Four, Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Satyam "� have dedicated centres of excellence for .Net.

One can be sure that Bill Gates did not visit Bangalore the last time around just for photo-ops with Infosys chief mentor Narayana Murthy.

If Java has some impressive numbers to show among the developer community, so does .Net.

According to an estimate by research firm IDC, 90 per cent of India's 550,000 developers are targeting the Windows platform. Of this 90 per cent, 65 per cent use MS development tools. This automatically makes the .Net platform a shoo-in for substantial success.

If you were to ask Daniel Ingitraj, marketing manager of Microsoft, whether Java will remain the dominant language among Indian developers, he dismisses the idea.

"The question may have been valid in the year 2000, at the peak of the dotcom boom, when Java was dominantly used for website creation. With the dotcom bust, things have changed. We do not think that Java dominates the market any longer."

In support of his contention, Ingitraj names several major global projects that were developed around .Net. The £20 million London Congestion Charge project was one of them. Over 300 .Net developers worked on this project.

"In the last 18 to 24 months, several (other) major projects have been developed on .Net, including some in Hollywood, The Gap, Marks & Spencer, Pepsi and British Petroleum. Three years back (when .Net was not there), these may well have been Java."

The battle, quite clearly, is not David vs Goliath. It's more like Goliath vs Godzilla, where the two camps have to use both muscle and mindpower for the ultimate prize: domination.

Java as a language is promoted, pushed and marketed by industry heavyweights such as Sun Microsystems, IBM and Oracle. Ranged against them is Microsoft.

The fight is not just about two corporate camps vying for supremacy; it is also about competing ideologies. It's open standards versus proprietary technology. Size versus sizzle.

With its large developer population, India has become a key battleground for .Net and Java evangelists. For the ultimate victor will be decided by the number of developers who work on these languages and the number of applications they develop using these languages.

Says P K Unnikrishnan, country head, marketing, for Sun Microsystems India: "Today, there are only two major developer bases "� Sun's (Java) and Microsoft's. Customers and developers who want to go the open standards way and do not want to be locked into a single vendor are the ones who are developing on Sun's platform. India, with its large tech-savvy community and English skills, forms a major force in the worldwide developer community."

According to Unnikrishnan, of the 4.5 million software developers worldwide, more than three million are Java developers.

In India, there are an estimated six lakh developers and about half of them are Java developers. Sun claims that the number of Java developers is growing at the rate of almost 30 per cent per annum.

Ground zero in the battle is educational institutions, since the war-cry is "catch 'em young".

Both Microsoft and Sun are vying with each other to tie up with educational institutions to ensure that future developers are exposed to their language of choice.

Estimates by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) suggest that the country produced around 2.6 lakh engineers in 2002-2003 "� half of them B.Tech graduates and the other half diploma holders.

The total number of engineers is expected to rise to 2.94 lakh in 2003-2004, 3.27 lakh in 2004-2005 and 3.69 lakh by 2005-2006. The number of IT professionals (those who have studied computer science, electronics or telecom) will rise from 1.26 lakh in 2002-2003 to 1.58 lakh in 2005-2006.

In the last 18 months, Microsoft has tied up with Anna University in Tamil Nadu, which has 220 engineering colleges affiliated to it.

In Andhra Pradesh, Microsoft has signed an MoU with JNTU, which has 120 colleges under it. There are similar tie ups with universities in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. These tie ups mean that engineering students will access the latest Microsoft offerings for their projects.

Sun and IBM, too, run similar programmes. Says Frank Luksic, vice-president, software group and developer relations, IBM India: "Under our university relations programme, we are closely working with several leading educational institutions in the country to impart open standards-based education as part of their regular/official syllabi, which comprises Java/J2EE as well."

The Java bandwagon is also being rolled out among software companies. Adds Luksic: "Under our corporate skills development initiative, we have been working with computer and software industry majors to help employees enhance their skills with Java for both basic certification and high-end project skills for experienced professionals. We have conducted over 100 such group training (programmes) for various companies in the country."

"The stakes are high and it is a numbers game. Typically, software developers prefer to work on open standards because it enables faster development and is more collaborative. If, as predicted, India becomes a major supply base for developers, the language of choice could well be Java considering the fact that it has been here longer and more developers are exposed to Java than to .Net," says the head of programming for a Bangalore-based software company.

Kankariya of Impetus Technologies begs to disagree. While there is no gainsaying that many developers love to hate Microsoft, it does not mean Java's protagonists hold all the high cards.

"When you look at the big picture it is clear that .Net will offer Java stiff competition. It has most of the same technical capabilities as Java.

One of Java's biggest technical advantages, its support for a large number of powerful application servers, is mitigated by its high cost. This is especially true when you consider that most of the features it provides are built right into Windows."

Pramod Khera, CEO, Aptech Ltd, one of India's largest IT training institutions, offers supporting evidence of .Net's wide appeal.

"There has been a significant increase in the demand for .Net technology and select markets have shown an increase in demand by about 25 per cent this year."

Such numbers, say competitors like Sun and IBM, are natural because most developers across the world like to broadbase their skill sets. They would thus prefer to be well-versed in both Java and .Net.

Khera would second that: "Students also seek advanced Java programmes like EJB and JSP (Java Server Pages) because the demand for multi-skilled professionals is the need of the day."

JSP technology provides a simplified and fast way to create web pages that display dynamically-generated content. (Microsoft's equivalent is ASP, or Active Server Pages).

The JSP specification, developed through an industry-wide initiative led by Sun, defines the interaction between the server and the JSP page, and describes the format and syntax of the page.

The EJB component model simplifies the development of middleware applications by providing automatic support for services such as transactions, security, and database connectivity.

That Java is popular and continues to generate interest cannot be denied.

"SunTech (Sun's annual developer conference) started off four years back with about 200 attendees and today it has grown to about 3,000 attendees this year in Bangalore. Most importantly these attendees paid about Rs 1,500 per head to attend this conference," claims Unnikrishnan.

The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), defines the standard for developing multi-tier enterprise applications.

J2EE simplifies enterprise applications by basing them on standardised, modular components, by providing a complete set of services to those components, and by handling many details of application behaviour automatically, without complex programming, explains Unnikrishnan of Sun. He believes that Java will develop because of its collaborative approach and through the Java Community Process, or JCP.

"The JCP is the organisation that maintains and enhances Java technology. More than 600 companies and individuals work through the JCP to add new functions and features to Java. They include Sony, AT&T, AOL, Boeing, Kodak, EDS, Enron, Lockheed, Matsushita, NEC, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Thomson, Vodafone, Yamaha, IBM, Hewlett Packard, and many others," he says.

The biggest advantage is that these companies together create a compatible foundation for application development and deployment "� and they achieve this quicker than any individual company or a traditional standards body (read: Microsoft ) is able to achieve. Indian developers play both a direct and indirect role in all this.

For example, there are Indian companies that do very high end quality development work on Java, the Pune-based Iopsis, Pramati and Vergil being being some of them.

But while Java may have an overall lead, Microsoft has the upper hand on the usability front. It's .Net applications are slick and sharp, with tonnes of great features, says Kankariya.

Moreover, Java's biggest strength "� open standards and collaborative development "� could also be its biggest weakness.

Says Subramaniam Sahasranamam, head, telecom practice, at CG Maersk: "While Java has a great legacy, .Net is high on branding. Java evolved because it was a good philosophy, and against proprietary systems. .Net is all about business and addresses the business segment and nobody sells it better than Microsoft."

Despite being a Java supporter, Sahasranamam points out that while Microsoft doles out tremendous support for .Net developers, the same cannot be said about Java.

"Sun or IBM or any other partner are not able to offer an organised support base to fix a problem or a bug. The collaborative approach can hurt because there is no fixed standard and there are no SLAs (service-level agreements) that Java offers."

Says Sridhar Mitta, managing director, e4e, a technology holding company: "The challenge for companies like Sun and IBM is to ensure that Java does not go the Unix way. Unix as an operating environment lost the race because companies had their own variants and there was no fixed standard. That, in the long run, can be dangerous for Java."

But IBM's Luksic feels these worries are overblown. India, he points out, is increasingly becoming Java country.

"The market is moving towards an on-demand era, where customers are increasingly looking at IT as a pay-per-use resource. In such a scenario, open standards will be the key driver for all technology development and deployment. Java is one of the key components in today's open standards scenario."

India, according to Luksic, has demonstrated over the last decade its ability to adapt to the rapidly changing needs and demands of the global market. "We expect India to play a leading role in terms of skills availability in the future as well," he says.

Kankariya sums the Java Vs .Net scorecard differently. According to him, it is a fact that Java has a large, passionate following of people who have spent enough time with the language to know it well. And Java works across platforms.

"But it is also a fact that Microsoft still dominates the desktop. If you were trying to create a product that you wanted to sell a lot of, you'd be crazy not to at least make it work under Windows."

His conclusion: "In the mid- and entry-level markets, .Net has a definite advantage. But in the enterprise market it will be a tough fight."

Gartner research predicts that the enterprise market will split equally between J2EE and .Net at 40 per cent marketshare each in the near future.

But to get even, both Microsoft and Sun will have to battle the odds in the marketplace.

Additional reporting by Shuchi Bansal in New Delhi

Java vs .Net scorecard

Orientation: J2EE is platform-neutral, while .Net is Windows-centric and language-neutral. This means developers are restricted to Java language in the J2EE framework and Windows in the .Net framework.

Strategies: J2EE is basically a series of standards. .Net is Microsoft's product strategy based on the evolution of its Visual Studio 6.0.

Industry involvement: Sun has rallied the entire industry behind J2EE, including IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems. .Net is based on Microsoft's sole efforts to grab the Web services market.

Pros and Cons: The larger J2EE vendors offer robust solutions, but for low-level J2EE implementation one has to do a lot of rigorous homework of mixing and matching solutions from various vendors. .Net provides a complete solution of tools and services, but may lack some of the higher-end features found in J2EE solutions.

A Java and .Net primer

Java technology is computer software invented by Sun Microsystems in 1995. The technology lets devices of all kinds run just about any kind of programme, giving you the tools, games, and information you want most.

Java's main strength is that it is platform agnostic. You can develop an application using Java language and then run it on any operating system "� be it Linux, Unix, or Microsoft Windows. It works on open standards.

A Microsoft application, on the other hand, can work well only on a Microsoft operating system, because it is proprietary.

According to analysts, Java today is everywhere. It's embedded in mobile phones, PDAs, and pagers; it's inside video games, TVs, and websites. It's pre-installed on most desktop PCs.

One of the main differences between Java and .Net is that Java is, fundamentally, a programming language while .Net is a framework that supports many languages. .Net is often identified with C# computer language, but C# does not equal .Net. You don't need to use C# in order to build .Net applications. Some 20-and-odd other programming languages will work as well with .Net.

So what's .Net, if it's not just a programming language? Well, .Net's view of the world is from a platform. It is designed from the ground up to leverage specific aspects of the Windows platform to its advantage.

Java, on the other hand, is language-centric. But this has begun to change with J2EE. With this version, Java has started to create a framework around itself, and extension technologies like Jini and JXTA certainly strengthen Java's platform. Still, the way in which Java attacks problems is from a language point of view.