Currently, most G2000 organizations have standardized on Java as their enterprise development platform of choice. Much of the reason for this has been the immaturity of the Microsoft alternatives and the challenges to building modern, Internet-architected applications with many of the existing frameworks. (These include distributed object systems such as CORBA, or technologies such as CICS or Tuxedo, which do not natively support Web application architectures and capabilities.) Difficulties have been compounded by a lack of component-based development and Web architecture skills. In addition, even those organizations that have standardized custom development around Java continue to bring in new applications that are based on other standards. The importance of integration creates further challenges, as many of the Java-based Web applications were designed to represent capabilities from existing applications to new constituencies of users. This requirement for integration and interoperability will encourage companies to examine the availability of modern integration technology, especially Web services, in their development platforms.

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The combination of Web services with tight budgets and proven successes of commodity-hardware-based solutions, along with the ongoing costs and shortages of component development skills, will both alter the reasons for choosing a platform and encourage many organizations to choose Microsoft technology as the primary platform for new development. Microsoft has been very aggressive associating .Net with Web services. Visual Studio.Net will be an early entrant with associated development tools that will simplify the creation of Web services. The Web services capability in the platform, coupled with a suite of solid development tools and a position as a low-cost alternative (because of commodity hardware deployment and relative lower costs of Visual Basic and other Microsoft-specific skills), will be the primary drivers for the use of Microsoft technology. This trend will accelerate as Web services capabilities become ingrained in the organization and Microsoft-based systems can be easily integrated with other existing legacy or Java-based environments. Microsoft will go from its present position as a high-risk strategy to a robust competitor to Java in the enterprise development space.

Microsoft will continue to extend its position through a combination of capabilities. The relative cost of the total environment will continue to be lower than most alternatives. The functional capabilities of these environments will be comparable, except in marginal areas that matter to relatively small segments of the buyers. The pervasiveness of Microsoft technology elsewhere in the enterprise (on departmental servers and most especially on the desktop) will enable them to offer simplified integration capabilities with other assets, such as e-mail, desktop, and workgroup applications, mobile devices, etc., in a convenient form. Additional factors will include improved management and monitoring capabilities, and increased support for high-reliability systems both in the software and in the underlying hardware. Although no one of these factors will be overwhelming, the combination will convince many organizations to choose Microsoft technology as their preferred platform for enterprise software development.

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