The chief scientist at Sun Microsystems believes the Java development language has a foothold in Asia which could act as a catalyst for the emergence of a new bloc of global software services companies.
'If you try to name the 10 biggest computer companies in 2002 - just five years away - you had better be careful who you list,' John Gage said in a keynote address to Networld+Interop in Tokyo last week.
'You'd better leave five blank spaces for the companies that you programmers will create using Java.' He said the reference material for programming in Java available in Japan already surpassed that available in the United States. He will host the first Java development conference outside the US in Tokyo on July 14-16.
Mr Gage said Netscape's ability to grow in just three years to a size achieved by Microsoft in 11 years demonstrated the benefits of Web-based software deployment.
Mr Gage also applauded Netscape's support for Java and highlighted some points made by Marc Andreessen, Netscape's co-founder and senior vice-president of technology, who also spoke at Networld+Interop.
Mr Gage said Mr Andreessen had inadvertently announced Netscape's commitment to JavaBeans (components of computer code written in Java) a week earlier than intended when he told the conference all Netscape products would be usable as JavaBeans.
