More Java Spilling Across Wall Street Enterprises

By Maria Trombly | Securities Industry News | April 1, 2002

Java has hit prime time on Wall Street.

"As a brokerage, we use all technologies, we are not married to one. But Java is also primary-this is not something that we're going to ignore," said Ram Nagappan, managing director of technology for Pershing, a division of DLJ Securities Corp., a Credit Suisse First Boston company.

Java is versatile because the same program can run on any machine or device. "You develop once and run wherever you want," Nagappan said.

It's somewhat like the way Web pages look the same whether viewed at a Windows machine or a Macintosh. A browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer ameliorates the differences between the machines, making it easy to develop Web sites.

Otherwise, programmers would have to design separate sets of Web pages for each kind of computer. Similarly, a Java Virtual Machine, which can come pre-packaged with a computer or be downloaded off the Internet, wipes out those differences, making interactive online games that run inside a browser possible as well as Web-based business applications.

In addition to a Java development team, Pershing has a .Net development team-Microsoft's competing platform.

Each one has advantages, Nagappan said. Java is ready to deploy when it comes to mobile devices, for example, while .Net is further ahead in Web services.

"Java doesn't have a Web services solution," he said. "We want to leverage the advantage that each platform gives us."

Meanwhile, the battle between Sun Microsystems, the developer of the Java language, and Microsoft continues on the legal front. Sun filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft early in March seeking $1 billion in damages.

In the suit, Sun demands that Microsoft stop distributing its own Java Virtual Machine code and wants Microsoft to include Sun's Java Virtual Machine with Windows XP and Internet Explorer. If Windows doesn't come with Java installed, it makes it harder for application developers who must ensure that all users get the Java Virtual Machine download.

But Java has become so popular that developers aren't too worried.

"The use of Java is so widespread it would be impossible for Microsoft to remove it from its operating system," said Guy Churchward, director of global strategy at software vendor Tarantella, based in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Tarantella uses Java to pipe out legacy applications over the Internet to users. The applications no longer have to be distributed to everyone and kept up to date and all the data can be centralized and tightly controlled.

A small Java program loads itself onto the user's machine and displays the needed data, while all the heavy processing work takes place on the server. Security is built in and the speed is fast enough that the program can be used with a laptop dialing into the Internet over a cell phone.

"Before Java arrived, we couldn't figure out how to do this, to be honest," said Churchward. "With Java, you write once, run anywhere-it's the tool we needed to work in this environment."

ABN Amro Bank BV uses Tarantella to distribute applications running on Unix and mainframes, said Henk de Ruiter, the company's director of infrastructure.

"It is, for us at the moment, the best thin client solution for nonWindows-based applications," he said. ABN AMRO is also using Tarantella for secure access to applications over the Internet, and is considering using it as a deployment portal for all kinds of Web-based applications.

A more robust version of Java than the one running inside a Web browser is Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), which runs on a server or mainframe and can handle all but the most demanding and computation-heavy applications.

Three or four years ago, there were performance problems with Java, and lack of standards between various Java implementations, said Nagappan. "But recently, in the past year, the performance issue has been addressed," he said.

Java now approaches C++ as the workhorse of corporate application development.

That Wall Street is interested in Java was demonstrated by the high level of attendance at the recent Java on Wall Street conference, said Nigel Woodward, business development manager for financial services at Sun Microsystems. "We've got market momentum here," he said.

Sun also offers a Java-based development platform, Sun One as do other vendors. IBM has its WebSphere product and BEA Systems offers the WebLogic platform, both of which are heavily dependent on Java.

"There is absolutely no barrier now to building enterprise applications and there are plenty of cases where people are building fundamental software on Java. We're seeing big market-level decisions being made about building next-generation functionality on Java," said Woodward, conceding that the largest of these applications are still months in the future. J2EE is also machine-independent.

"That is the most important thing here," said Nagappan. "If I have an application that needs to run on Unix and on NT, and I develop in C++, we need to port it to run on both platforms. But now with mainframes supporting Java, that gives the advantage of develop once and deploy everywhere."

Another advantage of Java is that it is an object-oriented language-applications are written in pieces that snap together like Legos. Since discrete parts of applications, or the components, can be easily taken out and exchanged for other pieces, components can be reused.

"The Java programmer can deliver more functionality in a lower amount of time because of the more efficient nature of the language," said Radford Laney, director of ebusiness at Philadelphia-based trading software firm FNX Ltd., which uses Java. "But it's hard to compare apples to apples," he added. "The older C programmers probably know C very well and when switching to Java they may not do as well."

However, because of the building-block structure, it should be easier to maintain Java programs as time goes on, Laney said.

And the components don't have to be all developed in-house-a company can build the proprietary or custom parts of its application itself and buy the rest from a vendor. Java also handles housekeeping tasks easier than other languages.

"The turnaround time is very quick because you're not spending a lot of time dealing with memory allocation errors," said Robert Brazile, director of product strategy at e-business software provider ATG-which serves Zurich Scudder Investments, Charles Schwab and other securities firms.

Sun's Woodward points out that the whole premise behind Web services is that of open standards-and Java is all about open standards.

"I don't think Microsoft is further ahead, as far as deploying," he said. "It's exactly the same standards as Java is deploying. Java has been around for five years and .Net has been around for a year, 18 months."

Woodward did say that Microsoft is strong in the area of Web services development tools, the kits that programmers use to build new applications. "Java has appealed to engineering types who in general don't tend to flock toward development tools-they like to do it themselves. So there might be some differences there."

But he added that, although there might be fewer development tools on the Java platform, similar capabilities as with .Net are available to programmers.

"That is to be seen," said Nagappan. "Sun and the other vendors need to move fast because Microsoft is positioning .Net and virtually owns the name Web services."

Another disadvantage to Java-which is also one of its strengths-is that it's supported by a variety of vendors.

Unlike Microsoft's .Net platform, which can only be bought from Microsoft, Sun licenses Java to other companies. This means that it can take a bit of tweaking to move a Java program from, say, IBM's WebSphere to BEA's WebLogic platforms.

But that's nothing compared to moving a program written in an older language from one machine to another, said John Knightly, senior director of financial services marketing at BEA Systems.

"We do work with other vendors-Sun and IBM-to ensure that the standards remain open and we can work across them," he added. "In addition, we're also part of initiatives in Web services and we work closely with Microsoft and IBM to make sure of the ability of Web services-based applications to share information between them."

In addition, like Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP, Java also comes in different releases. This has caused some problems for FNX's Laney.

"Some of our pure Java deployments require a Java virtual machine on the client desktop and the different software vendors are delivering on different versions of the Java virtual machine," he said. That's like having one of your vendors write a program that only works in Windows 95 and another only writing for Windows 2000.

"The new versions have new features," Laney said. "They're supposed to be backward-compatible, but it's a complex environment and if we're deploying on a version that uses a feature that an older version doesn't have, there's no way it can be compatible-but these are common problems that aren't unique to Java."