what happens when we can’t afford the emperor’s new clothes?...

What Happens When We Can’t Afford the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Copyright 2007 SpringSource. Copying, publishing or distributing without express written permission is prohibited.

Afford the Emperor’s New Clothes?

Rod Johnson

CEO, SpringSource

FIRST: A PRESSING QUESTION

Copyright 2007 SpringSource. Copying, publishing or distributing without express written permission is prohibited. 2

WHAT IF IBM BUYS SUN?

So What…

• From a technology point of view, it no longer matters much to enterprise Java


WHY?


HOW DID WE GET HERE? THE LAST 10 YEARS OF ENTERPRISE JAVA

The long-term narrative

• Two major factors help us to understand the history of enterprise Java


–The economic cycle

–Developer empowerment

Once upon a time, a breath of fresh air…

• Java started off as a simple language

–C++ --

• Even today, Java is not particularly


• Even today, Java is not particularly complex as a language

Yet it has achieved a reputation for complexity...

No one still builds web applications

Ruby on Rails killed off enterprise Java


No one still builds web applications using Java today

No one will date a Java programmer

Enterprise Java has experienced a resurgence in the last few years

• Fortunately, “Old J2EE” was saved from itself by developers and open source

• …despite the incumbents kicking and screaming and denying there was any


screaming and denying there was any problem

– Particularly, Sun and IBM

• But “Old J2EE” reputation still hurts

What went wrong?

• Excessive complexity was introduced along the way– “Enterprise” Java lost touch with its roots

– The “E” word provided cover for much


– The “E” word provided cover for much unjustifiable complexity

The growth of the Complexity Industry

• Ex CORBA architects who wanted to have another shot at some of their fetishes

• Embrace by huge companies who helped to define platform

• Resume padding among developers and


• Resume padding among developers and architects

• “No pain no gain” fallacy

• Economic exuberance

It’s the economy, stupid

Money to spend gets spent

• Economic exuberance

• Who cares about efficiency?


Economic cycles change fashions, and more…

• Economist George Taylor (1926) coined the Hemline Index*

• Theory that lower hemlines mean a


hemlines mean a falling market

• Market confidence, availability of moneychanges peoples’ behaviour

*Taylor’s theory does nothold in Vegas

Economic downturns reduce software complexity

• Complexity is an expensive luxury

• Truly bad ideas need a booming economy to take root in to survive– …not merely true of sub-prime mortgages


– …not merely true of sub-prime mortgages

The Bad (Good) Old Days

• In the dot com boom, it was not unusual to see projects run for years and waste $10s or $100s of millions

• Mired in complex:


• Mired in complex:

– Middleware

– Process

– Application design

• It’s over

– We might want the economy back, but not the technology

A short history of enterprise Java complexity

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Economic growth vs Complexity

Corporate SOA strategies

Economic crisis – Lean

software

Dot com boom - EJB


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5

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97 98 99 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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Complexity

Economy

Anne Thomas Manes, Burton Group

SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of


catastrophic impact of the economic

recession. With the tight budgets of 2009, most organizations have cut funding for their SOA initiatives.

As the big vendors As the big vendors consolidate their hold consolidate their hold on corporate budgets, on corporate budgets,


on corporate budgets, on corporate budgets, developers are driving developers are driving the Lean Software the Lean Software movement.movement.

18 Entire contents © 2008 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.

Lean Software is the antidote to Lean Software is the antidote to bloated vendors, products, and bloated vendors, products, and applications.applications.

“Lean Software”

• Forrester defines “lean software” as an approach to building, delivering, and running software that values fit-to-purpose, simplicity, and time to results above all

• Lean approaches minimize complexity, startup time, resource usage and avoid features not essential for


resource usage and avoid features not essential for the application’s business purpose

• “Driven by a community approach, not a new powerhouse…Google, Salesforce, Red Hat, and SpringSource challengers of established vendors.”

Source: Forrester: Lean Software Is Agile, Fit-To-Purpose, & Efficient

Developer empowerment: A key part of the solution

• Over the last 10 years we’ve seen growing development empowerment

• Why?

– Because developers saved the enterprise


– Because developers saved the enterprise Java platform from its initial failure

– Because things change quicker than in the past, and management need to rely on developers more

Developers have enormous power today

• We live in great times for developers

• Ability to make a difference in a deep way

• Open source allows participation in


• Open source allows participation in shaping, not only using, technology

Today, Developer choices matter


Innovation from the community has made decisive change

Old leaders

• IBM

• BEA

• …

Today’s leaders setting the agenda

• Spring

• Hibernate

• Ruby on Rails


• … • Ruby on Rails

• Django

• Grails

• Eclipse ecosystem

The Cloud: The Tyranny of the Developer?

• Not just hype

– Unlike SOA, makes economic sense

• Further empowers developers


developers

– Could eliminates role of operations

• Means developer decisions can transition straight to production

Open source: An expression of developer empowerment

• Many open source companies see opportunity

– Recession Worries? Open Source Software Is a Great Way to Cut Costs (CIO magazine)


magazine)

– Matt Assay, “open source may be recession proof”

– ...

• Not just about license cost

Open Source is not just cheaper: It’s naturally simpler

Open source technologies tend to be simpler to use than proprietary technologies, as they need to be adopted without sales and marketing

Open source technologies tend to be simpler to use than proprietary technologies, as they need to be adopted without sales and marketing


Simplicity saves money throughout the project lifecycle

Simplicity saves money throughout the project lifecycle

Move away from Portfolio Sale

• As developers, we’ve all suffered from products purchased by senior management

– Part of a complete suite or


– Part of a complete suite or portfolio that was the Unified Answer to Everything™

– Appeared to come from a parallel universe

– Could never work in practice

The Portfolio Sale <-> Point Solution Pendulum

• Seems to swing every 10-15 years


Point solution Portfolio Sale

Points on the pendulum

Competing point

solutions

Booming Economy

Failure to deliver

• Swing toward portfolio solutions checked by complexity and failure to deliver

• Swing toward competing point solutions checked by large software players and


Economy

Consolidation of large players

Portfolio Sales

deliver

software players and customers’ desire to rationalize vendor relationships

• Portfolio solutions need economic booms to thrive

• Open source may have permanently altered the balance

Where are we on the Pendulum Today?

Development & economic reality Corporate mega-mergers


Point solution Portfolio Sale

Why?

• Developer empowerment means that portfolio products often aren’t used


often aren’t used

• … or usage is “hollow”

“Hollow” usage…

• IDE experience of a few years ago

– Development Managers reported their teams using JBuilder or another commercial IDE

– Their developers overwhelmingly reported using Eclipse


• Much WebSphere usage today

– Companies deploying in production on WebSphere

– Ignoring WebSphere programming model

– Using Spring and Hibernate to replace large parts of WebSphere runtime

– Often developing on Tomcat

– Often running Tomcat more and more in production, under the radar


WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO JAVA MIDDLEWARE?

Toward modular infrastructure

• The monolithic application server is out of step with the times

TraditionalTraditional

• Need lean point solutions with consistent elements


Web apps

TraditionalJ2EE

SOA

MOM

Web apps

Traditional

J2EE

SOA

MOM

You’ve previously heard me make some controversial predictions

• The flawed CMP entity bean model


• The age of J2EE without EJB (TSS 2004)

Today, something I’ve not said before...

RIP the Traditional Java EE Application Server

• The age of the traditional application server is over

• Has been living


• Has been living on borrowed time

• Recession is the final blow

Disruptive Market Forces


Traditional Application

Server

Why?

• In a recession, people won’t pay for features they don’t want or need

• Move to different kinds of specialized workloads

• Move to virtualization/cloud drives need


• Move to virtualization/cloud drives need for lightweight products

• Productivity challenges to enterprise Java put spotlight on complexity

• Emergence of new programming model, decoupled from server has freed applications

Evidence: Tomcat Momentum and Leadership

• By far the most popular application server today, in development and production

• Used by around 70% of organizations


• Used by around 70% of organizations developing Java web applications

• Represents developer-driven switch away from complexity

Evidence: Tomcat Momentum and Leadership

• No longer the Servlet RI, but doesn’t matter

• Is it a Tomcat or the elephant in the room?


0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

WAS JBoss WLS Tomcat

Springframework.org

BZ Research

Percentage of respondents who use product (adds up to more than 100%)

Evidence: High dissatisfaction with application servers

• As an indication of possible dissatisfaction with their current servers,


dissatisfaction with their current servers, 38% of all respondents said they plan to migrate to a different primary application server

38% dissatisfaction is not a good result…

• 92% of Prius owners would buy again


• 91% of BMW 335 coupe owners would buy again

Even incumbent application server vendors agree on technical drivers for change:

The days of one-size fits all servers are evolving towards purpose built servers that specialize in specific types of

workloads (e.g., Web). – Jerry Cuomo, WebSphere CTO


WAS.Next, it is a vision that we have already been implementing towards. A componentized middleware runtime, that can be tailored for specific profiles... –Alan Little, WebSphere Chief Architect

Even incumbent application server vendors agree:

The BEA line of server products is moving towards a set of OSGicomponents. This allows them greater flexibility in terms of what they can run together, as


what they can run together, as well as allowing the same management tools and

deployment for products across the range. – Alex Blewitt, BEA

Architect

Technical Disruption: OSGi™

• Ability to modularize applicationsexposes the age of the Java EE model

– Lack of versioning

– Lack of fine-grained redeployment


– Lack of fine-grained redeployment

– Library conflict problems are only going to get worse

• App server vendors are implementing servers using OSGi™

– What’s good for them is also good for you

Gartner: Trends in Platform Middleware: Disruption is in Sight

The convergence of technology trends will yield a new breed of platform middleware products that will be only partially compatible with the current


partially compatible with the current generation…

- Gartner Group, September 2007

What’s common, what varies?

• Step 2: core server software common to different scenarios

TraditionalTraditional

• Step 1: Portable, future proof programming model


Web apps

TraditionalJ2EE

SOA

MOM

Web apps

Traditional

J2EE

SOA

MOM

Where applications run today, and what they have in common

Spring ApplicationsWebLogic 26%

JBoss 38%

WebSphere 43%

Apache Tomcat 68%


0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Forrester

A majority of [enterprise Java] users interviewed by Forrester use Spring

InformationWeek: Raven Zachary

The adoption of Tomcat reflects the Java programmers' preference for lighter, simpler technologies.

Java Application Server Usage, Source: 2008 Evans Data Survey

Apache Tomcat 68%

Trends in Platform Middleware: Disruption is in Sight

• Spring can help provide stability as

Meanwhile, a new generation of Java-based, non-Java-EE compliant platforms addressing XTP requirements has selected Spring as its programming model.

- Gartner Group, September 2007


• Spring can help provide stability as applications and technologies evolve

Spring can potentially support any container (Java EE or not), thus enabling a good degree of application portability across different platforms.

SpringSource’s server strategy

• Four key advantages

– An independent vendor

– No need to protect a revenue stream on a product people don’t want


– Leaders in the movement that reclaimed enterprise Java for developers, not defenders of the status quo

– Building on de facto standard programming model that spans far more than traditional application server model (Spring), and the #1 server (Tomcat)


• Recognizes the realities in the market

• Embraces, rather than fights, developer choice

– No unnecessary complexity


– No unnecessary complexity

• Provides developers with the features they want with the operational features enterprises need


• tc Server is a solution for WAR-based web applications which you’d already like to run on Tomcat

• dm Server is targeted at next-generation, modular applications


generation, modular applications

• The best place to do OSGi on the server side

• Not limited to web workloads


• Combines developer-driven simplicity of open source with enterprise grade management needed in the data center


• Consistent management fabric spans both servers

Why do people choose Tomcat?

• Fast

• Robust

• Better development experience than Java EE servers


Java EE servers

• Spring’s abstraction and portability allows them to choose the most appropriate server, removing the API barrier to Tomcat adoption

Tomcat limitations

• Tomcat is great for what it does, but not perfect for the data center

• Why do some people not adopt Tomcat


• Why do some people not adopt Tomcat or switch back?

• Perceived lack of enterprise support

• No management capabilities

• Desire to use Java EE APIs such as EJB

SpringSource tc Server

• Addresses the major Tomcat limitations

• Strong Tomcat/Spring solution reflects the market-leading choice

• The Tomcat you know, the enterprise capabilities you need


capabilities you need

• Enhanced operational management capabilities

• Enterprise-level mission-critical support

• Significantly lower cost than legacy app. servers

• Powerful, yet lightweight solution

Who should use tc Server?


SpringSource dm Server

• Next generation, completely module-based application server

• Runs on the SpringSource dm KernelTM

• Harnesses the power of Spring, Tomcat and OSGi


Benefits for developers

• Lightweight

• Memory footprint < 10% of traditional monolithic application servers

• Strategic solution to shared library hell

• No more version conflicts between servers and applications


applications

• Effective sharing of libraries between applications

• Modular server, with opportunity to modularize applications as well

• Far superior choice for very large applications

• Realizes vision of pluggable application server in J2EE without EJB (2004)

dm Server offers next generation modular middleware

• Not limited to web workloads

• Will form the basis for lean point solutions

– Integration


– Integration

– Batch

– Third party

– …

• Adds common deployment and management model to Spring’s portable programming model

An important step on the road: More still to do

• The demise of the monolithic application server is a big step toward addressing the remaining challenges of enterprise Java

• Back in 2003, we started by targeting J2EE API complexity


complexity

• We succeeded, but there is still excessive complexity in enterprise Java development/deployment as a whole

• SpringSource is focused on tackling the whole problem

– Watch for announcements in next few months

Conclusion: The changing of the guard

• So, the parents of enterprise Java complexity are finally getting married

– It no longer matters…


• IBM, Sun no longer central

– Haven’t been central for years

The future

• The people who matter are you and vendors who can build on your energy

• Java must get lighter

• Must offer a more joined-up experience


• Must offer a more joined-up experience

• Must advance from the past into the new world of cloud, virtualization and high developer productivity expectations

• The age of the traditional application server is over

• An important


• An important step towards making Java more competitive

• The age of Lean Java has already begun

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