Categories Programming

Continued from What Happened Next?

When Iona Technologies' Annrai O'Toole speaks of CORBA's prospects, he becomes almost evangelical. "Object request brokers will be everywhere, from your dishwasher to your mobile phone," he has predicted. Note, however, that he uses the future tense.

The distinctive selling proposition of PC standards-setters has always been that something imperfect today is better than something better at an undefined future date. The triumphs of Intel's x86 over Motorola's 680x0 and of Windows 3.x over IBM's 32-bit OS/2, as well as other key victories, have been driven by users' preference for using the tools on hand instead of waiting for more elegant solutions.

Microsoft brought the "bird in the hand" dynamic into the battle over who would define the rules of component computing. "These CORBA guys had their shot" is the opinion of Microsoft's James Utzschneider. He continues, "They were never able to deliver their component integration story in a cost-effective manner."

Microsoft, of course, argues that its own solution--the Distributed Component Object Model, or DCOM--was both delivered and proved cost-effective in the mid 1990s. Microsoft's follow-on, COM+, is promised in the same time frame--the late '90s--as the competing Enterprise JavaBeans (and also promises backward compatibility with developers' DCOM investments). Thus are the battle lines drawn.

Next: Who's on the Field?

Published as Enterprise Computing in the 4/20/99 issue of PC Magazine.