The Object Management Group’s Corba is widening its lead over Microsoft’s DCOM among larger enterprise users in Japan, where the overall market for distributed object technology is starting to take-off, says a new report by Soken Planning Co Ltd, a local market research company and affiliate of the OMG.
According to Soken’s Distributed Object Computing in Japan: 1999 Market and Trends, the Object Management Group’s Common Object Request Broker Architecture is now the preferred choice for large scale, multi-platform integration projects at 61% of Japanese companies. This is a strengthening of Corba’s popularity since October last year, when it polled support from only 41% of companies. DCOM support, however, has been thrown in reverse. While 33% of companies endorsed DCOM last October, only 17% said they preferred it when Soken polled them again in April.
Overall, commitment to distributed object technology (DOT) is growing quickly in Japan, says Soken. Some 17% of end-user companies are now using DOT, 15% say they are planning to, and 51% say they are evaluating the technology. Larger users are leading the way, particularly those building web front-ends to mainframe legacy systems.
Although OMG and Soken conclude that Japan is now a hot market for DOT, the usual suspects are not necessarily among the main beneficiaries. Since 1998, the dominant position of Corba compliant object request broker vendors from the west, such as Iona and Inprise, has eroded and new local players have emerged. These include Fujitsu, with its Object Director tool, and Nihon Unisys with its System nju.
Now that the number of Corba implementations is around 70, about 20 product vendors, 15 plus distributors and about 10 independent consulting firms participate in the Japanese DOT market, said Junichi Suzuki, Soken Planning’s technical director of. Each player needs to learn the unique market structure and trends for keeping competitive position in Japan, he said.
