email article
	printer friendly

The Promise of Java Everywhere
What does it take to bring Java into all parts of your operation?
by Peter Varhol

September 2003 Issue

The recent JavaOne theme of "Java Everywhere" has gotten me to thinking about just what it means to have Java everywhere in the enterprise. The JavaOne theme, of course, referred to a somewhat different concept, that of Java being universally available and used extensively in many organizations, on PCs at home and at work, and on millions of cell phones being manufactured. Java is universal in the sense that the Java platform is available on virtually all computers and computing devices.

But I wanted to think about that theme from the standpoint of an individual organization. Enterprises that are serious about extending the benefits of Java from the data center out to the edges of the business have to prepare people and infrastructure to achieve that goal. Delivering Java applications in the data center, on the desktop, to customers, and to devices has the promise of improving business processes and connecting people and activities that have thus far resisted such links.

There's no question that current Java standards along with advances in network technology make at least part of this vision possible theoretically. But if you have to make it work in an enterprise, what are the key factors that will enable you to successfully build and manage that vision? I've identified five such factors, which I explain here. There may be more, but anything else I've considered can be traced back to one of these five.

Skills – Any ability to make Java applications available across the enterprise begins with the technical skills of those charged to make it happen. These skills cover the spectrum from systems analysts to help desk staffers. In many cases, the skills available are spread across the spectrum of hardware and software used over the preceding twenty or so years, and may not map very well to the requirement to deliver Java applications across the enterprise. While you may be able to do some hiring to fill critical gaps, it's important to be able to map existing skills to these needs.

Mapping skills doesn't mean you can't apply these existing skills into Java application architecture, development, and administration. But to map skills and career aspirations into needed activities, you have to have a complete catalog of employees' experience and goals. Then you can be creative in applying people to activities based on unique contributions they can make to those activities, or on how well those activities represent a continuation of their career goals.

Collect Information
Tool chain – This factor is a comprehensive tool chain that complements the skills of those using it. Building, maintaining, and deploying Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications is done within the context of software geared to aiding and automating each process. Requirements definition and traceability, a comprehensive development environment that supports high productivity, functionality, performance, load testing, and application monitoring and diagnosis tools are essential in developing and deploying quality applications. Web and application servers complement the computing infrastructure to deliver the applications to end users. It's valuable if these tools can share information, so the developers can easily get defect information from the functional testers, and operations administrators can collect reliability information for capacity planners. Even better, tools such as Altaworks' Panorama and Mercury/Performant's OptiBench let these groups share information specific to the application through the use of the same tool.