Is J2EE really dying?

Yesterday one of my colleagues sent me an e-mail with the subject "Enterprise application environments - does J2EE still have a future?". His opinion was that when comparing J2EE and .Net at the moment there is no real benefit of using J2EE or JEE as it will be known I think in the near future.
Summarizing he stated that pro-J2EE arguments like having no Vendor Lock-in, OS platform independence and having open source solution no longer really go for J2EE. His arguments supporting this were for instance when you use a platform from BEA or IBM you're stuck to using their components because when you would like to use a third party or open source component you'll be stuck working around a lot of integration problems. Another argument was "who needs OS Platform independence nowadays really?".
As such he concluded that .Net wins by points, J2EE just on Emotions.

Well I replied to him as follows....

To my opinion the only thing my colleague noticed are fading edges between J2EE and .Net. However this does not necessarily mean that all of a sudden J2EE is useless and does not meet Enterprise Application developments needs.

To my opinion it's fine that the two technologies are developing towards each other, because it makes sure the discussion about it will only grow and it will give the opportunity to have a critical look at the way forward for J(2)EE.
Furthermore it leaves the choice to customers and System Integrators like Capgemini for a certain technology more open, both being able to serve their needs. This might mean that the decision will be a "gut feeling" decision in some cases again! Some of my best decisions were based on my gut feeling....

As far as the ready-made stacks of vendors like BEA and IBM are concerned (he mentioned that in his email as an argument for vendor lock-in becoming a theme in J2EE) you see that those are moving towards out-of-the-box solutions to build a nice SOA for instance. This is different from building a Web application with for instance Spring and Hibernate, but it does very much have to do with Enterprise Applications and is based on the J2EE technology!

So to my opinion J2EE is still alive and kicking, and after 10 years now providing a solid base for a lot of Enterprise Applications and SOAs.
There's a enough room for both J2EE and .Net and if they will grow towards each other more and more we might en up with the best of both worlds in the end!

Well, just a blog.....

Hi!

Well again It's been a while, but I worked on this one before, just did not publish it. As an example the title started as "Happy new year!", so that's what I'll just give you: I wish you all a very happy new year and all the best for 2007!

At the end of January (31st, just like queen Beatrix of the Netherlands :-)) we celebrated the first birthday anniversary of Anne-Roos. She likes cake, we found out that ;-)!!! And as of the 25th of February she can walk! Yep it's official, she walked from the couch all the way to the dining room table, which is approx 15-20 steps for her! There are some new photo's of her (mostly :-)) in my photo album.

As I told before I'm currently on a project for Deutsche Post AG, thé postal firm in Germany. It's very nice to be in an international project like this. The projects assignment is to bring the current CRM system built with Epiphany which is a J2EE CRM Software package to the next level. The environment for this system is great since the CRM system itself connects to 16 (!)different other system by using mainly EJB / webservice interfacing. We will be responsible for first upgrading the current system from version the current to the next and after that designing and implementing new functionality, mostly involving "inserts and updates" to the interfacing systems.

In January I had the third module of the Leadership program and what I got from this module is that I still miss my dad... a lot... (he died of cancer in 2000) And that he pushed me a little to much to become independent in the past. He just wanted to do it right, because he did not get the opportunities when he was young. This brought me that sometimes I have some difficulties with deciding and I sometimes leave decisions to others, just to keep the peace.
This is gonna change! From now on I will stick to what I want.

And the last topic is the choice of my new car....
The short list at the moment is:
Renault Gran Scenic (the one at the back...)
Citroën C4 Picasso

So much going on!

Hi! Yep you're right it's been quite a while again since my last post, but there's so much going on at the moment.

Currently I'm working on an International assignment for the largest Postal firm in Germany (well which company will that be?!) . It's a stretched assignment which fits in great with the Fast Forward program I'm in. The project is based in Bonn in Germany and so far it's been a great experience!

Besides that I've been to a training this week at Les Fontaines, Capgemini's training center in Chantilly, France.
It was great! Although it took so much energy physically, it returned so much mental energy and strength. The training called "Emerging leadership", actually took us on a journey through what leadership means, which styles there are, what style(s) you might have and most of all being authentic. The last item meaning so much as sticking to your own values in whatever you do. To me that means from now on keeping a close eye on my work life balance, especially since I'm abroad a lot at the moment.

Well another thing going on at the moment is that I'm in the process of writing an article together with colleague Sid B. Dane, about the combination of SOA and RIA (Service Oriented Architecture and Rich Internet Applications for the few of you who haven't been swamped by the Web 2.0 and SOE (Enterprise) buzz ;-)) so soon you'll be able to judge that I hope....
Another idea for an article is coming up at the moment probably about Configuration Management then.

And finally with the holiday season coming up, Shuap (the band I play bass-guitar in and sing) is going to play at a children's Christmas service. I'm really looking forward to that!

First Fast Forward module!

As mentioned before I'm currently in a young leadership development program, called Fast Forward (FFWD). This program has been setup to ensure the future leadership within Capgemini Netherlands.

This first module was mostly about getting to know each other. Well we sure got to know each other ;-)
At the end of two days at least my conclusion (and I think others felt so too) was that being someone who's leadership skills are noticed by the outside world most of the time has to do with how much you've experienced in the past.
What I mean is that most (if not all) of the FFWD participants seem to have a "history", meaning they lost a relative, have been in an accident or somehow had an experience that changed their life drastically. Especially their view on life and how and what they want to achieve.

Besides this serious stuff we also did some fun stuff, like:
Making an helicopter flight, doing a GPS survival tour and some crossbow shooting.

At the end of day two the energy level for most of the participants was fairly low, but the mental energy level was very high. A good feeling is what remains at this moment!

We'll see what the next module will bring us... The location (Les Fontaines) is alright so...

Yep I sold it....

As I told you earlier I got myself a Canon 350D camera... So it was time to sell the got old (well old...) 300D or Rebel as the rest of the world calls it.

I tried the dutch e-bay site marktplaats.nl, but that turned out to be a mistake... A lot of 300D's there and eventually a shitty price!

So I thought hey what the hack, I might as well sell it to my brother-in-law. He likes to play around with photography since he's been in Mexico this summer, still analog back then (seems like ages ;-)) and now he's moving on into the digital world!

The next post....

As you can see it's hard to get into the Blog rhythm...

Here is a try to get it on!

I've been uploading some pictures to my picasaweb site (http://picasaweb.google.com/arjan.kramer) like the one you see here from my daughter! Take a look around, I think they are nice ;-)

A lot happend the last few weeks, a couple of highlights:
- I got the Canon 350D digital camera! Woowie!!!
- I'm currently working (with a couple of colleagues of the German part of Capgemini) on a Proposal for a big German company. I might have to go there for approx. 6 months.
- I was asked to participate in a Leadership development programme within Capgemini Netherlands!!!

I will get back with more on these topics soon ;-)

First post....

Well, I finally managed to startup a blog...

This is my first posting, hope you'll come back and check my blog again!

Yesterday our daughter Anne-Roos was christened in the church in Buurmalsen. It was a very nice moment in her (until now still) short life.
The band I play in, played a couple of Christian songs during the service, and Anne-Roos was just sleeping during the whole thing!

Hope to show you some new pics soon!