"The continuing economic uncertainty is making free software
look attractive to a growing number of companies. For many
organizations, the standard practice in Java-based Web application
development now is to develop using open source tools like Jboss or
Tomcat. While many companies, particularly larger firms, then
typically switch to commercial Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)
application servers like BEA's WebLogic or IBM's WebSphere, some
companies are choosing to deploy their applications using open
source software.
"'Companies are looking to get into ebusiness but they get
floored when they talk to companies like Oracle and IBM about how
much it's going to cost,' says Gil Anderson, CEO of systems
integrator Caribou Lake Software, in Minneapolis, Minn.
"While many Fortune 1000 companies are using open source Java
tools to develop applications, they usually deploy those
applications on commercial application servers, says Anderson.
That's possible because both sets of tools meet the J2EE standard,
so migration is straightforward..."
