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

[George Bourozikas]

On Wednesday 05 July 2006 19:55, Sunny Dubey wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 5. Juli 2006 13:30 schrieb Michael Bacarella:
> > 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.
>
> One word: Marketing
>
> Marketing plays a large part in decision making.  But lets not talk about
> IT-marketing, because we're all part of IT and thus we actually have a clue
> and are that much biased.  So lets talk about food marketing:  "organic".
> Java is expensive, and so are organic foods.
>
> How many times have you compared the regular stuff to the organic stuff and
> purchased the latter because you simply felt it would taste better and be
> of higher quality ?  Everybody has! But how many of you guys actually know
> what constitutes for "organic", and how the food was raised, picked,
> packed, shipped, etc ?  You don't and so you make ignorant decisions. (I
> have too!)

Well, I do.  (I imported organic olive oil as a side for a while, and learned 
more than I wanted to learn on organic certification, etc.)  "USDA Organic" 
certification is kind of a scam, an attempt by huge agribusiness to hi-jack 
what used to be a fringe designation once it became popular.  Here's the 
timeline:

1. Seventies environmentalists call the food they produce "organic" to 
distinguish it from mass-produce pesticide-ladden food.  Their initial 
clientele is just as interested in healthy food as it is in environmentally 
sustainable production.

2. "Organic" gains momentum and verges into the health food category.  Such 
consumers (yuppies?) are health conscious, have more money and are less 
environmentally conscious.  The size of the market attracts the attention of 
agribusiness.

3. Certification rears its ugly head.  "USDA Organic" takes the prize for cost 
and lax rules.  This is just what agribusiness paid for: an expensive 
certification process with so many loopholes that they can squeeze their 
nominally organic products through.  Not to mention that there is no account 
taken of the environmental impact of the food distribution.  For example, 
organic grapes from Chile may not have pesticides in them but huge amounts of 
fuel was consumed to fly them to North America.

4. Real organic farmers and original-type consumers are upset.  Some adopt 
the "biodynamic" designation.  Others call their products organic anyway, 
without the seal of approval (and courting the courts)...

As a someone who likes food that tastes good, likes to cook, believes that 
what tastes good must be good for you and does not trust the FDA to tell him 
what is "safe," I have the following set of guidelines:

(a) I buy local at farmers markets.  Organic/biodynamic is even better.  Fresh 
vegetables and fruit that was harvested ripe really taste a lot better.

(b) If I need something that is not available locally, I prefer organic.  I 
find that it tastes better.  I also think that loading my body and those of 
my children with chemicals is not good for us, no matter what various 
government bodies tell us.  Our bodies are much more sensitive than lab 
animals, we live longer than any lab experiment can last and the various 
regulatory agencies have been known to eat their words - I don't want to be a 
statistic on, say, the safety of aspartame.

So you are right, marketing plays a role but there must be something there to 
start with.  Take Java for example.  When it appeared ca. 1995 (?) it held 
amazing promise.  The closest thing we had to a universal language before 
that was C and COBOL - a sad state of affairs.  The next true competitor 
didn't emerge for many years and this gave Java a huge head start, just when 
the land rush was in full swing.  I imagine that the installed base of Java 
applications dwarfs that of most about any "competitor."

A new enterprise starting out now would be foolish to just pick Java without 
looking at the alternatives but if you are a bank, say, with tons of Java 
applications everywhere how could you justify giving up a pretty modern 
development environment in order to embrace the cutting edge?  Hell, people 
are still developing in COBOL so as not to break consistency.

So I would say that when you start a project that is fairly independent of 
what is already there, picking Enterprise Java blindly may not be 
cost-effective but there are so many costs associated with bringing in new 
technology that one has to make a clear case of significant savings in order 
to justify it.

--george