.Net overtakes Java

Microsoft's .Net software development platform is more popular than Java in the enterprise, according to one industry analyst firm's report detailed on Wednesday

Info-Tech Research Group said its research found .Net the choice over Java among enterprises of all sizes and industries. Entitled, "It's Official: .Net Roasts Java's Beans," the study explored the relative prevalence of Java and .Net across different types of enterprises and found .Net has gained considerable market share and become the favorite of many enterprises.

In conducting its study, Info-Tech said it recently surveyed more than 1,850 organizations of different sizes. Info-Tech's research is not sponsored, a company representative said.

Almost half of all enterprises responding to the survey focus primarily on .Net with an additional 12 percent focused exclusively on .Net, the research found. This compares with just 20 percent of enterprises focusing primarily on Java and only 3 percent standardizing solely on it, Info-Tech said.

Java is not out of the game yet, the company said. But in offering hope for Java devotees, Info-Tech likens Java to legacy code. The company said .Net may emerge as a means of stitching together diverse applications but the immense amount of Java code will remain in the tradition of other legacy systems such as Cobol. Java also has "incredibly strong allies" in Sun Microsystems, IBM and Oracle, Info-Tech said.

Sun, which developed Java, declined to comment on the Info-Tech report. Sun recently decided to change its identification on the Nasdaq stock exchange from SUNW to JAVA, in recognition of its bread-and-butter brand.

More than twice as many enterprises develop with Microsoft’s .Net than Sun’s Java. Of 1,850 organizations surveyed, half focus primarily on .Net and 12% focus on it exclusively, as opposed to just 20% who focus primarily on .Net and a mere 3% that rely on it exclusively.

Granted, the methodology might influence the percentages larger than they actually are (after all, even I can name more than five other developer platforms more popular than .Net without breaking a sweat), but its safe to say that Java is about as popular as male pattern baldness.

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