Project saga and Enterprise direction

Still no performance testing results from the project I have been developing. Not only am I keen to see how my design performs, its especially important when delivering the product to the client with guarantees on its capability and meeting the clients initial requirements.

On another note, our organisation recently stated its intention of using .Net as its central strategy for enterprise development and client deals, a move away from Java/J2EE. While we still also develop J2EE without any intention of stopping this (we would develop apps using QBasic if it made enough money) , the focus has moved from J2EE to .Net (which to me is a good thing being a .Net advocate). Why? I guess we can all jump to conclusions that Java/J2EE is dying but I dont think thats the case at all. We are finding the number of opportunities in J2EE dwindling (for whatever reason), but more importantly, the cost of development, cost of maintenance, ability of current resources to up-skill considerably easier/cheaper. For example, consider a bunch of ASP programmers. Not much OO/Component type development. Going to .Net, although a jump, is still easier (or at least seems easier to them), than going to Java/J2EE. The Java/J2EE jump seems more significant than the .Net jump for many reasons, and I think this is one of the reasons the management is keen to go the .Net path in a more "balls and all" fashion (excuse the crudeness).

Again, we still have Java/J2EE work in our org but the number of .Net opportunities are increasing much more than J2EE , so much so that some Java/J2EE developers are being forced into the .Net camp to keep "billable" <-- a favourite term among our managers.

I am not attempting to draw any conclusions, but simply state observations from my small corner of the world. I hope Java/J2EE stays for a long time around as at the very least, it will drive MS to make a better .Net.

I would welcome any comments and/or observations from your own organisations/companies. I'd be interested to see if there is any trend or is just specific to our market and skillbase.