[nylug-talk] Why does "enterprise" imply "Java"?

[Michael Bacarella]

Management believes that they can buy pricey enterprise software,
pricey hardware (either one big one or lots of little ones) and save
money by putting a team of inexpensive programmers that have Java in
their resumes to work to build infrastructure.  All you need is one
King David and a generic army to carry out the orders, or something.

But...

Information technology is perhaps unique in the peculiar fact that
one developer can literally be 10-100x as productive as the next developer,
but only cost 2-3x as much. 

Given this, is there still a good business case for deploying the enterprise
solution with its team of OK programmers versus hiring, say, 2 scruffy
programmers that can build the same system at a fraction of the cost?

Even if you add in costs of trying to find replacements for the cream of
the crop talent, you're still saving a lot on hardware and licensing
fees. 

But the debate never seems to even come up: Enterprise Java wins the argument
before it starts.  Why?  If the answer is that in the end, it still saves money,
I can live with that.  But if there is no good answer, it spells opportunity.

-- 
Michael Bacarella <mbac at netgraft.com>