.net Market share

how does it measure up?

[RossWal]

Does anyone have a feel for the adoption rates for .net? Is it gaining ground on J2EE? To what extent? Where does LAMP fit in?

Any comments, theories, guesses werlcome!

Ross

[Xoc]

Companies will give a lot of hype. However there is one objective test you can do: spidering web servers and seeing how many report back the http header that they are running ASP.NET. Netcraft did just that. This month ASP.NET web servers overtook Java Server Pages [news.netcraft.com]. There was also an increase 224% in the last year.

So the adoption rate is very high. A more subjective measure: Among my training customers (largely Fortune 500 companies), I am seeing them start moving out of the experimental phase into using .NET for production applications at a fairly high rate.

[RossWal]

Great Info!

Thanks!

<edit>
But I'm wondering why PHP isn't listed. I'm only familiar with the MS world, so maybe I'm missing something here?
</edit>

[webdevsf]

spidering public websites has nothing to do with the adoption rate of .net. for every public website a company has, they usually have several intranets that aren't spidered. additionally, .NET and J2EE are more than just for webservers.

[Easy_Coder]

webdevsf makes a great point and to add to it... some companies that have adopted .net may be writing all of their custom clients in .net while maintaining a website that is on an entirely different platform.

[txbakers]

This might be adding fuel to a fire, but I don't see a future anymore for J2EE. It's old technology, struts was a bust, and .NET is taking off everywhere.

I'm recommending .NET over Java these days just because there is quite an adoption rate for it these days.

[duckhunter]

some companies that have adopted .net may be writing all of their custom clients in .net while maintaining a website that is on an entirely different platform

Of course. It doesn't make sense to rewrite an existing site that is functional and successful just to do it in .NET.

Many companies are migrating key pieces of their site(s) to .NET to take advantage of new functionality. I have several .NET areas now spreading through existing ASP sites but only where necessary or the coolness factor is too much to resist.

Cool shouldn't be a reason but it sure makes it fun when that's part of your rationale and .NET has loads of groovy cool widgets all over the place.

[Xoc]

usually have several intranets that aren't spidered

Totally true. .NET is frequently better for developing intranet interfaces to databases than doing public sites. If you are doing static web pages, there really is no reason to use .NET.

[duckhunter]

Another good place for it is Administrative backends which are very similar in functionality to intranets. My employees pull new orders, research customer issues, etc. using a .NET interface.

If something is quirky, it happens in the office where I can monitor any problems very closely. This is allowing me to pick and choose what pieces of .NET I adopt for my customer interface after playing around with different methods of doing the same thing. A little practice never hurts and after trying several things, you find out real quick the ones you want to avoid due to old browser compatibility issues, speed or other considerations.

[Easy_Coder]

It doesn't make sense to rewrite an existing site that is functional and successful just to do it in .NET.

I'm not suggesting that... merely agreeing with webdevsf that looking at web server stats from NetCraft does not give a clear indication of the adoption rate.

[duckhunter]

You're right, it's not the whole picture. But it is an absolute indication that software shops are turning out PUBLIC .NET apps at a higher clip than the others.

One would expect if all the programming talent is churning out .NET stuff for the www, they're not writing J2EE for the intranets.

[Easy_Coder]

I typically wouldn't make a technology or language decision until I've heard the problem that needs to be solved.

Cool shouldn't be a reason

Your right on with these comments. Choosing for cool factor could walk a solution right into a corner if it ignores the problem defination.

[korkus2000]

I have created intranets for 6 years for some large companies like Bellsouth. In my experience MS tech is usually found more on the internal stuff. Companies have extra windows boxes in the back they convert to servers to start them out then move to rack servers over time. Instead of getting a redesign they just use the legacy code.

Not to say I haven't seen a lot of linux crop up, but intranets and reporting apps are usually not high enough priority to spend budget on a total recode. Consultants usually would rather upgrade an asp reporting system to .Net instead of changing to J2EE. I have seen them want to move to PHP instead of Java if they are going to change platforms.

Also frontpage is probably the number one intranet software in businesses. Almost everytime I come in on an intranet that needs to become a core application, it was originally created in Frontpage just because it was easy to have the little widgets created.

Intranets are usually a test bed for ne technologies. Most intranets I see today have been .Net for a year or more. I was fixing and adding to intranets created in .Net back when it was just coming out in BETA.