Application Servers 2008 Rankings

[rose]

Overall Rankings

IBM’s WebSphere application server is now ten years old, and during that
time, it has evolved and matured into what its users think of as the best
application server anywhere, but most especially in the large enterprise
market where IBM has traditionally had its home. Make no mistake about
it, WebSphere is a powerhouse in many ways, and its users truly love this
product.
The new WebSphere 7.0 is particularly impressive with support for the
latest Java EE and EJB technologies, and is accompanied by the best rated
Rational Application Developer suite of tools. Also noteworthy is the IBM
strategy of releasing new versions of its application server at intervals of
every two years, while making Feature Packs available at much more
frequent intervals. Thus, large enterprises can enjoy the continuity that
results from less frequent major product releases, while still benefiting from
access to leading edge technologies as they become available.
WebSphere was ranked higher in ten out of twenty-one categories by its
users than any other application server was. These categories include some
of the ones that users also nrated as most important, including performance,
scalability, support, and diagnostics. (A view of how various products were
ranked via category is found in the Enterprise Edition of this report.)

One surprise in this year’s report was the open source application server,
Geronimo, from the Apache Software Foundation. Geronimo is relatively
new, but its users rated many of its features very highly. As an open source
program, Geronimo might have been burdened by the perception amongst
users of a lack of support. We often find that users of Open Source
Software primarily list lack of good support as a complaint. However, this
was not the case with Geronimo, and much of that has to do with IBM.
IBM has provided resources and support in a variety of ways to Geronimo
and the Apache Software Foundation, including technical support. This is
likely one of the reasons that Geronimo came in second in quality of
support, right behind WebSphere.
The other real surprise in this survey’s results was how poorly WebLogic
was scored by its users. WebLogic had the best user scores of all the
application servers when we conducted this user satisfaction survey in
2006. This year, virtually all of WebLogic’s rankings were down. The most
likely reason for this overall decline in users’ perceptions is the fact that
this survey was being conducted during, or shortly after, Oracle’s
acquisition of BEA, and the relatively poor scores users awarded to
WebLogic may have been at least in part due to uncertainty about the
product’s future. In July of this year, Oracle made an announcement which
basically stated that WebLogic would become their strategic application
server, displacing the venerable Oracle Application Server—though Oracle
states that OAS will continue to be supported and maintained.. This
assurance of devotion to WebLogic Server from Oracle may well
reinvigorate WebLogic’s users’ perceptions and future user surveys may
show more satisfaction. Right now it looks like there’s an opportunity for
WebLogic’s traditional competitors.

JBoss is one of those competitors, and provides a constantly evolving
application server which was cited by users as delivering the best value to
cost ratio, the best compatibility with other software, and also the best
security—all extremely important features in the enterprise. JBoss,
ColdFusion, and Sun Java System Application Server/GlassFish were all
very close together in scores, right behind Microsoft’s Windows Server.
Windows Server is both an operating system and Microsoft’s application
server, and users gave it good scores across the board, but especially
preferred its easy database connectivity. ColdFusion is Adobe’s application
server with a long and respected history and tools that make it perfect for
Adobe’s other technologies, such as AIR and Flash. GlassFish is the new
incarnation of Sun’s Java System Application Server. Over the last two
years, the open source and proprietary projects have grown up together to
finally be merged in 2008 at JavaOne. GlassFish is currently enjoying a
large uptake in popularity judging from downloads. Finally, SAP’s
NetWeaver is a bit more specialized in its positioning. It is the application
server part of the NetWeaver platform, designed to run SAP applications
and tailored to the large enterprise. Recently a significant new Java version
was released but users most likely were reflecting the older version.

http://www.evansdata.com/reports/viewRe ... eportID=20

[tsilochr]

rose, μήπως πρέπει να κάνω login? Επειδή είναι 23 σελίδες το report, υπάρχει γενικό outcome?

[rose]

Οχι ακριβώς, απλα συμπλήρωσε τα στοιχεία. Δεν έχω δει κάτι tsilochr.

[tsilochr]

apache geronimo ε? για να του ρίξω μια ματιά...

[rose]

Απ’ότι ακούγεται, δεν τα πάει και τοσο καλά με enterprise features...που δεν τα χρειάζεσαι πάντα.