Java Is in the Mail
At United Parcel Service, Java is winning on the Internet server, close on the intranet, and a wait-and-see proposition for corporate services.

Java's progression at UPS reflects the reality for a large business that primarily deploys Sun servers for its Internet and extranet, but relies on some 1,200 Microsoft NT servers, as well as Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

UPS Internet developers expect to complete at least three Java applications between now and early 1999--two quite large by internal standards. Mark Hilbush, UPS' manager of customer automation, Internet Systems, says UPS assigned about half a dozen of its C++ programmers to do the work as well as recruiting others--a task he likens to finding C++ programmers 10 years ago.

While UPS Web operations have relied extensively on C and C++, Hilbush says Java has real benefits over those languages--avoiding pointer and memory references, easier debugging, code that is easier to maintain and extend, and greater portability. But Hilbush isn't using Java for its own sake. Where it makes sense, applications are written in both Java and C++, and HTML is apt to be used for the client.

The current trade-off lies with performance, but Hilbush is convinced that Java performance isn't cause for concern in the long run. And he says the challenges presented in the work UPS is doing means he doesn't have to dangle a boat or a condo to recruit programmers.

His doubts about Java center on Java applets downloaded to the client. "That approach was way premature and way oversold," says Hilbush. "You can go down that path in an intranet, where you have more control," but on a Web site like UPS', you "have to be sensitive to what is on the customer desktop."

On the enterprise side, Mark Morelli, manager of UPS' advanced technology department, partnered with Hilbush to analyze its Java plans. His group has done some Java prototyping and is evaluating Java on the client and in embedded systems. Morelli is satisfied with Java applications' performance on fat clients, but he's not sure Java applets running in the browser are quite "ready for real time." A key issue for UPS is that it can't control customer desktops; for applications that must be used internally and externally, client-side Java simply doesn't work.

Another reason Morelli is hesitant to commit is that it's not clear how the distributed computing world will shake out. Morelli sees COM (Component Object Model) as primarily aimed at NT, leaving Java's Enterprise JavaBeans to compete with companies providing DCOM-to-CORBA (Distributed COM-to-Common Object Broker Request Architecture) bridges. "That's the horse race," he says. "You'll have these bridges, and the question is whether [bridges] will be the preferred middleware, or will EJB?"

Another important consideration for Morelli is that until these larger issues are decided and JDK 1.2 is delivered, it will be difficult to pick the right development tools for the enterprise. "We don't want to have every group picking different development tools, because they'll change rapidly, depending on what happens in the marketplace," he says.

On the intranet, Morelli says UPS has already deployed Java on the server. The next step involves testing Sun's Java Plug-in as a way to distribute up-to-date Sun virtual machines across UPS' predominantly Microsoft desktop infrastructure.

He isn't willing to predict, though, when UPS will finalize its COM or CORBA strategy. "A lot of companies are banding to combat Microsoft, but look at Microsoft's market share," he says. "They have a good product and a good Java. You never know if they'll out Java."