| |||||||
![]() |
|||||||
What is Java for Business?
You've probably already heard that Java is ideal for networks and the Internet. But how will Java become a reality for your business? How can this technology help reduce the costs of reaching new and existing markets, and make your business more competitive?
At IBM, we understand that your business has an investment in technology already. You have equipment, existing databases and skilled employees. Here's the good news: we're not asking you to throw it all away and start over. You can start incorporating Java gradually, as an evolutionary extension.
Explore the possibilities, and discover how IBM makes Java real for business.
Benefits
Network Computing
Applications
Java's ValueMeet Java. Java is a cross-platform, network-aware computing environment that is compact and robust. Information services managers know that, typically, a business operates on many platforms, and they cobble together solutions using various protocols and expensive customized solutions to bridge mixed systems. Java solves that problem.
Java can change business for the better Java has the power to effect major changes. The personal computers on desks throughout your business are expensive to buy and even more costly to maintain. Java offers ways to leverage your existing investments in computers and software while minimizing the costs of implementing new systems and software. Your software can be written once in Java, and it will run on any Java-enabled computer. The end user can access your applications from any Java-enabled client, whether that's a PC with a browser or a network computer. While power users in your company will still rely on the local processing power of PCs, customer service representatives, administrators, researchers and other people who just need a computer's core business functions will find that a network computer such as IBM's Network Station is an ideal solution. It can run a browser like Netscape Navigator and retrieve, manipulate and distribute data and information from the corporate intranet or the World Wide Web. And as the development community creates more Java applications and applets, Java-enabled networks will give everybody on your network the tools they need to get the job done. A universal platform -- with custom solutionsHow you choose to implement Java depends on the nature of your enterprise. It's not hard to realize effective, innovative Java scenarios in retail, manufacturing, health care, sales and other industries that use information to further business goals. Introducing Java-based systems for businesses is by nature an evolutionary process. Java lets you keep working with your existing systems -- your PCs, servers and hosts -- because it is platform independent. So Java lowers the cost of computing, both in terms of developing and maintaining software and applications and in extending access to every computer user on your network. Share information through the networkBusiness computing is much more than just accessing information. You need to work with data in increasingly innovative ways. With its inherent platform independence, Java provides a perfect solution. Java-enabled middleware - which is the software on servers that helps client systems talk to host systems - sends applets on demand from network servers to the Java-enabled client Network computer or PC client enabled with Java. The client can get to the host transactional systems, such as IBM CICS, with no changes to the host code.
Want to find out more?
Java's Benefits
Benefits throughout the business cycle
Java allows for more flexible business processes. Response time to market conditions - both good and bad - is streamlined, which enhances productivity. And Java enables customer self-service since access to information and the applets necessary for fulfillment of requests and orders can be distributed on the Internet's open protocols.
Java and Network Computing
In the past year, programmers, developers and systems managers have taken Java in ambitious new directions.
So now it's possible to create full-featured applications using Java. And we're not just talking about word processors and spreadsheets. A new generation of Java applications will handle sales, customer service, accounting, databases, and human resources. In short, the key components of business computing.
Java ties together the three tiers of network computing -- the host system, the server gateway and the desktop system -- without requiring the different computers at each tier to conform to a single platform. Java fulfills the fundamental tenet of network computing: it puts the power in the network where every user who wants it can use it.
Java helps keep your network and its data safe because it's inherently virus-proof; Java applets can't alter data in computer files or on hard drives. So your company gets lower costs while everybody in it gets the ability to collaborate. And innovate. Java simplifies the creation and deployment of applications and lets your company keep using its existing systems -- with a clear migration path for the future.
Applications of Java
Java supercharges the business network
For businesses that continue to rely on data terminals with "green screen" applications, a Java-enabled network computer offers enhanced features like an intuitive graphical interface and Internet access. Because Java lets you work with the latest information from the network, your changes can be immediately updated for everybody else on your network.
And everybody else on the network can be immediately updated with real-time data replication. So if you download a spreadsheet, update its numbers, run a graphing applet to view a dozen possible scenarios, then post your results on the server, that information is dynamically available elsewhere on the network.
Java solutions make your network a center of collaboration, with applets that are shareable by design. And Java lets you support key line-of-business applications that work within your existing software and systems investments. IBM is dedicated to helping you grow your business systems with Java software strategies and ideas.
Document creation and distribution can be fulfilled with a full complement of applications -- Lotus Notes or other groupware, word processors, spreadsheets, calculators, visual aides, presentation graphics, software for dynamic exchange of information and data, gateways to databases, even electronic commerce and Web publishing. Java ties disparate systems together, which allows the people in a business to accomplish more by accessing more information and tools.
|