News Brief: Java growth continues in corporate enterprise

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On Nov. 3, 1999, The North American Developer Opinion Survey by Evans Marketing Services of Santa Cruz, Calif., was released, reporting that 44% of developers are now using Java some portion of the time. The study predicts Java use will increase to 57% by 2000. Usage patterns outside the United States currently stand at 43% using Java, with 61% planning to use the language next year.

We asked Janel Garvin, vice president of research at Evans Marketing Services, what the results of the survey mean to people in the corporate IT space, and to what she attributes Java’s steady growth.

Java use is “quite strong in the corporate space,” she says, specifically in “enterprisewide corporate apps. Obviously, the number one area it’s being used in is the Internet space.” Its second most popular area of use is the “enterprisewide development arena, where it’s being used in large corporate enterprise apps.” For example, “you have 50,000 people and 20 different sites to deploy in a very heterogeneous environment. Java, being a multiplatform language, is well-suited for this; it’s well-suited for CORBA, and it’s a natural for thin clients. We also foresee other implementations further down the road,” Garvin says.

She adds, “When we asked developers about Java use, we asked them not just the percent they’re spending on it now, but how much they plan to spend on it next year as well. In every case, they responded that they’re expecting to spend more on it next year. This isn’t true of VB or of C++, it’s only true of Java. While Java is not being used as the primary language amongst corporate developers, because of the large existing code base in other languages,” explains Garvin, “it is certainly the most steadily growing.” IJ

Adnan Ashraf produces content for Intranet Journal. He can be reached at aashraf@earthweb.com.

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