Survey: Enterprise .NET Investment on the Rise

A recent survey indicates that investment in .NET-based enterprise applications is now outpacing investment in Java-based enterprise applications.

Of course, no survey is 100 percent reliable, but what is interesting about this survey is it is not sponsored by Microsoft. CA sponsored the survey, which was conducted by Evans Data. The survey targeted enterprises with 1,000 or more employees and queried 350 developers and managers involved in creating or managing business-critical .NET applications.

Microsoft has been touting the advance of .NET for enterprise applications for years. Now CA is supporting the claim. But CA's interest is not purely casual here. One of the findings of the survey is that a strong market exists for integrated APM (application performance management) solutions that support the increased use of both .NET and Java development architectures in the same organization. And CA just happens to own Wily Technology, which sells APM solutions. Wily got its start delivering performance management solutions for Java applications, but now supports both .NET and Java.

"These survey results confirm that .NET applications are pervasive in large enterprises and their acceptance and dependability is continuing to increase," said Mike Allen, director of product management for CA's Wily Technology division. "This begs the question of how to effectively manage environments that use both .NET and Java. CA Wily advocates a comprehensive application performance management solution that addresses both with a single solution and helps key Web applications to meet business, customer experience and performance goals."

Moreover, the survey found that most enterprises have highly heterogeneous application environments and that .NET support teams are similar to Java support teams in terms of size, structure, problem types and time needed to isolate problems. A majority of respondents said their .NET and Java groups are integrated within their organizations, and the management responsibility is spread across departments such as development, operations and quality assurance, and is equally required in both environments.

The survey also found that nearly 60 percent of respondents said their .NET investment is growing, while 50 percent said they are adding new .NET personnel. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said .NET expenditures comprise more than a quarter of their overall business-critical application investment, and nearly 20 percent of respondents put that figure between 75 and 100 percent.

"An increasing number of enterprises are realizing the benefits of deploying applications built on both .NET and Java," Jasmine Noel, co-founder and partner at Ptak, Noel & Associates, said in a statement. "However, with those benefits come the challenges of managing a heterogeneous environment coupled with the unique issues of both development architectures."