By Pia Heikkila, 26 June 2000 00:25
NEWS Microsoft has whipped up a storm of controversy with claims that "Java has had its day. Now the world has moved on". The statement came from Oliver Roll, Microsoft's director of enterprise marketing, just hours after the company announced its .NET strategy. Roll claims that because Java was written to run on all machines, right down to dumb terminals with low processor power, that has limited the services it can provide. However, the claims have been dubbed 'ludicrous' within the industry. Jason Vokes at Java specialist Inprise said: "As per usual Microsoft is dodging the issue. Java's best performance capabilities are in the server end, not at the workstations which is the area where Microsoft is strongest." Simon Moores, chairman of Java Forum's Research Group, added: "Writing Java's obituary 24 hours after the company's own product strategy announcement is very premature given Java's following from such heavyweights as IBM and Oracle. These companies will be reluctant to walk away from Java because of its open source." Meanwhile, David Pinnington, Java consultant at Sun Microsystems vehemently defended the technology. "Java is strong in the thin client area and the language is currently being used with technologies such as Java Phones, set-top boxes and other consumer devices which are traditionally Microsoft's PC terminals' main competitors. Therefore they are attacking an area which is their own weakness," he said. In related news, Microsoft is expected to launch a programming language called C# (C Sharp) which is believed to be similar to Java, this week. Reports indicate that it will be an object-oriented language which offers virtual machine-like functionality, and will be a cornerstone of the company's .NET strategy.
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