Microsoft: Study Shows Visual Studio .Net Tops WebSphere

Microsoft: Study Shows Visual Studio .Net Tops WebSphere
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Microsoft claims a study it commissioned shows that Visual Studio .Net 2003 fared significantly better in tests than IBM's WebSphere and other tools.ORLANDO, Fla.—Microsoft Corp. has commissioned a study showing that its .Net development environment is more productive than comparable Java environments, a top company executive said at the VSLive! Orlando conference here.

Microsoft Developer Division Corporate Vice President Soma Somasegar said Microsoft commissioned The Middleware Co. Inc. to study productivity and performance comparisons between Microsofts Visual Studio .Net 2003 and IBMs WebSphere and other tools, and Microsoft fared significantly better.

To read an interview with Rick LaPlante, Microsoft general manager of Visual Studio Team System, click here.

For building some enterprise applications, it took developers 195 man-hours with WebSphere, whereas building the same applications using Visual Studio took only 94 man-hours, Somasegar said the study said. Application server installation and configuration took 22 man-hours in the WebSphere environment and only 4 man-hours in the Microsoft environment. Handheld device programming took 16 man-hours with WebSphere and 7 man-hours with Visual Studio. Web application and Web service client programming took 69 man-hours with WebSphere and 40 man-hours with Visual Studio. Web service and Web application host programming took 59 man-hours with IBMs environment and 44 with Microsofts. And systemwide development took 29 man-hours with WebSphere and 2 man-hours with Visual Studio, according to the report, Somasegar said.

Meanwhile, in terms of overall application performance, applications developed in Visual Studio .Net 2003 showed better performance than applications built with IBMs tools, Somasegar said the study showed. Somasegar said applications built using Visual Studio .Net 2003 were able to deliver 635 transactions per second. Similar applications built using a hand-coded WebSphere implementation delivered 482 transactions per second, and applications built using WebSphere Studio Rational Rapid Developer Rational Rapid Developer delivered 365 transactions per second, Somasegar said.

In addition, Somasegar said Microsoft will be delivering changes to its development technology that will enable developers to create applications with 50 percent to 70 percent less code required.

The comparison not only involved productivity and performance, but also cost. According to the study, the Microsoft results are based on a system running Visual Studio .Net running on Windows Server 2003 and costing $19,294. The IBM results are based on a system running WebSphere Network Deployment edition running on Red Hat Linux and costing $253,996.

Somasegar said Microsoft is enjoying an increase in developer momentum toward the .Net platform. Based on internal and external sources, Somasegar said, .Net adoption has grown from 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies saying they use .Net as their primary development environment in July 2002, to 61 percent in July 2003, to 75 percent in July 2004. "That means three out of every four companies are targeting .Net as their primary development platform," he said.

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