Thoughts About J2EE

Is J2EE "The Way"? It sure seems like IBM wants everyone to believe that it is... and for many of IBM's bread-and-butter customers it surely is a very important technology.

I'm certainly open to the benefits of J2EE in very large-scale mission-critical transactional applications that deal with multiple data stores, but I'm as skeptical as the next guy about how applicable it is to the 80%+ of application problems that don't fit this category. Annrai O'Toole says this a lot better than I do, and Jon Udell's commentary is also very enlightening. I have hesitated myself to get involved with J2EE, though, not because of my doubts about the viability of a market for J2EE services -- but because of doubts about the viability of a market for my services in the J2EE world. As much as IBM talks about contextual collaboration (and I should add that I really do understand what they are talking about, and I believe in it and agree with their assessment of its importance to the enterprise) I just don't see the independent collaboration gurus getting a big piece of this pie. I see collaboration being swallowed up into the enterprise IT black hole and then delegated to the CSC's and EDS's because it's "all part of the same framework". Could I make a place for myself in the J2EE world anyhow? I probably could. I've played with the "big boys" before, and I know I can do it again... but that's not the way I want to be doing business.