Views on the Industry

monetizing java

I am moved by my post from yesterday, and still await Eduardo's response, that making money off of Java has become next to impossible. Between proprietary extensions eliminating portability with WL & WS to the lawsuit Sun has brought against Azul, there is very little that the big vendors are allowing to seep through to the next layer of vendors that are looking to make money off the left-overs of the $5B market for Java middleware. Gavin points out that Sun is basing its future on the concept of monetizing Java:

http://www.theregister.com/2006/05/17/sun_services_strategy/

IBM has already invested in this task by creating a WebSphere consulting force
that probably represents close to 50% of their revenue, BEA is on life-support from their WebLogic maintenance revenue (I disregard press releases that sing license growth), and Oracle is betting their infrastructure around maintenance revenue for Fusion. JBoss does not get lumped in to this because they are enabling a new crowd of developers, but they are nto doing much for their partners, at least those that are innovating around Enterprise Java, such as apps companies. There is no way the Java market will happen without portability, so that the burgeoning apps market actually can take advantage of that 250%+ market share that app servers have gained (>100%, due to adoption of multiple brands within companies).

That is why I am going to do from now on out, refer to the 5 platform vendors (4 after the eventual Oracle-WebLogic buyout) as brands that are doing everything they can to reference their own success but doing close to nothing for their partners. Partner programs are lipservice, plain and simple. For all the incredible success that Mr. Bauhaus has had over the past 12 months, his next 12 months should be on building the infrastructure to grow the Java market. That is the only way that whatever Jonathan is talking about makes any sense. Ironic isn't it that JS needs MB :).

Please do something to make it $6B by next J1, and $8B in 2008, we need to grow the Java market. Stop complaining about Azul, and killing Java innovation (why not sue RS and ORCL for taking app server secrets?), and start building on your claims of responding to developers. There are more developers that are doing their own thing, than work in companies, so respond to the Java apps movement, and build the community to make money for more than just Sun. You know what I'm talking about, just do it....

posted by douglas dooley @ 10:15 AM