From time to time, it is good to peek past the arcane numbers of quantitative analysis and examine the market itself. That is why I wrote those articles.
<1. IIOP is a much better basis for developing enterprise systems.>
It very well be, but as you admitted - the ultimate consumer does not give a damn about how it works ot why it works. They just want it to work, and have a lot of marketing blitz around it. This brings support of third parties, which brings dominance in the maket. OS/2 was superior to Windows 95, where did that get IBM? Geoworks Ensemble was far superior to all of the windows implementations up to v.3.1, where is Geoworks now? It is not technical superiority that counts, but marketing acumen and industry support. This is why MSFT INVESTS so much in marketing and this is why they are so succesful. Once critical market mass is reached, it becomes much less expesnsive to invest the majority of growth into R&D, therefore you get a superior product that truly justifies your position (ex. Word, Excel, Windows 3.1). Many of those who are actually in the IT indutry are jaded by knowledge that they have that is not shared by the rest of the IT consumer community.
<. Java helps level the playing field. Many developers are going to use Java Beans rather than Captive-X, not only because it can be used by a wider audience, but also because it is great technology.>
The key word in the above phrase is "are." When I was looking for a platform to develop my quantitative models, I really wnted to use Java, but Java does not work. There are a lot of Mac users on the distribution list who don;t have Excel, but I cannot help them without HTML. There is currently no "trustworthy" mission crirtical Java application available that I know of, and the closest to end user functionality is the Corel Java Office. Their spread sheet absolutely pales in performance to 32-bit Excel. The sheer calculation crunch of the modles will crash that sheet on a regular basis. I know that Java "WILL" get better, but while it is waiting for that functioanlity, and while developers are working on functional solutions, MSFT is captuting market share by offering solutions that work RIGHT NOW. That is a market fact that can be equated to the massice spending in R&D. Sun's Java beat MSFT to market. The MSFT OLE technology, once retrofitted to the web, beat Sun and their allies to the market penetration punch by what can be considered years, or at least many months.
Here is an interesting story that shows that I am not the only one that believes in sell side analyst motives and the effects of relying on earnings expectations.
news.com |
