Addi, it appears that SUNW is *already* doing a pretty good job of selling servers. I beleive that they sell a better solution right now than the Wintel crowd where speed and reliability are important.
I do not expect Java to result in revolutionary demand for servers, but perhaps some evolutionary increase in demand. In most smaller organizations, servers are used only for file storage, and they are not used much for their computing power. Wintel computers are sufficient for this, and I see some room for growth for Sun there, if they can start shifting the computing model.
In larger organizations, though, they are already used extensively in a client-server database model. The advantages of Sun hold in that environment as well as they do in a Java environment (perhaps even better). I do not expect Java to change much in that environment, except perhaps to make it somewhat easier to produce client software and (using NCs) perhaps easing the client administrative burden.
Java may also help move smaller organizations from a file-server model toward client-server computing.
One thing that is critical is that there is a serious world-wide shortage of software professionals. The U.S. could now (and probably will) open the floodgates to foreign labor, and it would not help - my understanding is that India, for example, is now pretty-much tapped-out for software engineers. Because computer science enrollments are WAY down, I do not expect this situation to be remedied any time soon.
Java MAY allow programmers to be more productive. However, inherent in any shift toward Java is massive replacement of existing software, and Java is unlikely to be THAT beneficial that that can be accomplished in the short order that many here expect. The net effect over the next 5 years, should a serious shift toward Java be undertaken, is going to be MUCH higher costs for software, at least temporarly.
The biggest stumbling block in the way of a massive shift to Java is that it may just not be possible - the skilled bodies needed to do this massive re-write (and most likely accompanied by re-design, not just rewrite) are simply not available. |
