Sun Java Caps

Sun Microsystems has announced the immediate availability of Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java Caps) 6, the latest version of its service-oriented architecture and business integration software.

Java Caps 6 is designed to let users rapidly add and integrate components in a modular fashion.

New enhancements include a modular enterprise service bus for rapidly coupling applications, along with advanced event processing and business process management capabilities.

Java Caps 6 also offers alignment with latest versions of the Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server and NetBeans Integrated Development Environment software.

Sun said that Java Caps 6 is the first mainstream SOA platform built on open source through the Open ESB community.

"We are changing the way products are developed by collaborating with open source communities," said Mark Herring, vice president of software infrastructure marketing at Sun.

"Java Caps 6 is a result of this effort and incorporates feedback received from community members, such as a modular and open platform and no vendor lock-in."

Sun also released a new master data management suite designed to give users a single view of customer data.

iPhone's Game Potential As a Threat to Java Phone Games

"In the runup to Apple's WWDC 2008, Chris Tompkins thinks that the iPhone's gaming potential 'might finally put the lackluster Java-based cell phone gaming market to death.' He cites the iPhone's use of Core Animation adapted for ARM processors, which he says allows for the advanced effects of OS X and now OpenGL-accelerated 3D games, as well as the importance of an on-demand store and Internet connection. Tompkins says that while certain genres lend themselves to the iPhone's touch controls, such as real-time strategy games (think StarCraft) the lack of physical controls will force developers to creatively approach the multitouch and accelerometer on the iPhone. His advice to Apple — make a compelling overture to independent game designers, and treat them like rock stars. Tompkins, incidentally, is one of several people who have recently pointed to Apple's mobile gaming potential."

Why Open Source Java will Win SaaS Platform Wars

McKinsey & Company published a report predicting the market size for Software as a Service (SaaS) will exceed $37B market over the next 5 years. In particular, the report described the need for Independent Software Vendors to SaaS-enable their products using special-purpose SaaS development tools. Matt Asay also wrote recently that the growth of the top 60 software companies is driven by SaaS.

McKinsey claims that traditional J2EE and .NET platforms are poorly suited to building SaaS applications. According to McKinsey, this opens up a $3B market for Platform as a Service (PaaS) products from new entrants like WaveMaker, Coghead and SalesForce. From the article:
Although SaaS development platforms like SalesForce and Coghead have gotten a lot of attention, this market has so far been remarkably closed and proprietary. The Platform as a Service leader, SalesForce, has both a draconian hosting policy (host your apps and data anywhere, as long as it’s with us!) but also a proprietary language (who needs Java when you’ve got Apex!?).
Moving forward, the same trends driving open source adoption everywhere else in the industry will ultimately drive SaaS adoption of open source, particularly by ISVs whose business plan does not include a low multiple sale to their proprietary hosting provider. Future SaaS platforms will converge with traditional tools, offering on-demand development based on traditional programming languages with built-in tools for mash-up based development for basic users.

JavaFX’s day in the Sun

Dan Farber has some information about JavaFX from the JavaOne keynote today. It sounds like it wasn’t a great day for demos but that we’re starting to get a better picture of JavaFX and what the plans are. Michael Coté has some additional information about Sun’s plans around Java as a whole and JavaFX. In our podcast with Joshua Marinacci before JavaOne, I was able to learn a lot about what the plans for JavaFX are and how it fits into the greater ecosystem of Java. It’s not a replacement for Swing (a UI framework for Java) and it’s also not entirely correct to say it competes with Flash, Silverlight, AIR, or any other technology.

JavaFX is just one part (albeit a very snazzy part) of many enhancements to the Java runtime which includes the Java Update 10 browser plugin that would enable JavaFX developers to target the browser with animations and vector art. But JavaFX is part of a larger Java ecosystem and is in some ways a lynchpin to allow developers and designers to create RIA experiences across a lot of devices. As Coté mentions, this is a lot like Adobe’s Open Screen Project and I think it shows an industry trend of moving towards a more cohesive multi-demensional platform.

Java has been down this road before so anyone counting them out isn’t giving them enough credit. They have a LONG way to go especially when you look at Adobe’s RIA strengths and Microsoft’s very enthusiastic entry into the space. But I think JavaFX will be a breath of fresh air for people and will help in expanding the RIA footprint further.

Keep on rocking in the free code world

It’s not everyday that you get to meet a rock legend. It’s certainly not everyday that you get to go to a software development symposium and meet a rock legend. But after covering some general session keynote highlights this morning I got dragged (willingly) into a restricted meeting with veteran rocker Neil Young – he of ‘Heart of Gold’ and ‘Keep on Rocking in the Free World’ fame – as he (and his production company) have used Java technology to build a career retrospective archive project.

After a flurry of Java-themed presentations from the guys behind the Kindle e-book offering at Amazon.com and Sony Ericsson telling us how they now employ 'emotive design' (I mean come on, honestly!) into their products, we got to hear from Mr Young himself who has used Sun technology to build a Blu-ray Disk based archive of his complete works. Volume one (I think there about nine more to come) was shown in the demo today.

Profits-strapped Sun continues decade-long pitch to developers on Java dominance

Leading up the the JavaOn developers conference, Sun Microsyste posted an embarrassing quarterly profit loss, is making OpenSola more open than ever, bringing the OpenSolar platform value to the Amazon Web Services cloud, and is still using variations on the projectile theme to send T-shirts into the international crowd of eager Java developers.

Here in San Francisco on Tuesday, the 12th annual JavaOne developers conference opened, still drawing throngs of the Java devoted. It’s clear from the gathering that Java tools, standards, middlewar, runtime instances and distributed computing methods still dominate the non-Microsoft enterprise IT landscape.

Even as many other innovations over the past decade have encroached on and often out-delivered on the “write once, run anywhere” mantra, Java has done great things for the ability to develop and deploy complex, mission critical applications that leverage assets and resources across multiple tiers of computing. The n-tier computing model based on standards of interoperability is alive and well.