CRM - Customer Relationship Management

CRM is the abbreviation for customer relationship management. CRM entails all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related.  CRM is often thought of as a business strategy that enables businessesto:

• Understand the customer
• Retain customers through better customer experience
• Attract new customer
• Win new clients and contractsIncrease profitably
• Decrease customer management costs

While the phrase customer relationship management is most commonly used to describe a business-customer relationship, however CRM systems are used in the same way to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads.

CRM solutions provide you with the customer business data to help you provide services or products that your customers want, provide better customer service, cross-sell and up sell more effectively, close deals, retain current customers and understand who the customer is.

Technology and the Web has changed the way companies approach CRM strategies because advances in technology have also changed consumer buying behavior and offers new ways for companies to communicate with customers and collect data about them. With each new advance in technology -- especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the Web and smartphones -- customer relationships is being managed electronically.

Many aspects of CRM relies heavily on technology; however the strategies and processes of a good CRM system will collect, manage and link information about the customer with the goal of letting you market and sell services effectively.

Organizations frequently looking for ways to personalize online experiences (a process also referred to as mass customization) through tools such as help-desk software, e-mail organizers and different types of enterprise applications.

The Future of Android - open source

As the Android world grows, it becomes an increasingly juicy target for malware. Infected apps have been spotted in various Android app outlets on numerous occasions. The platform is less restricted than Apple's, for example, and with those freedoms sometimes come security dangers. Critics say Google could address Android's security issues with a few tighter control policies.

The number of attacks on Android devices has been rising over the past few months.

The malware has exotic names such as "Zitmo," "DroidDreamLight," "Hong Tou Tou," "DroidKungFu," "YZHCSMS," "Geinimi" and "Plankton."

In January 2010, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) removed more than 50 fake banking apps from the Android market, and in March of this year, it removed another 50 infected apps, Amit Sinha, chief technology officer at Zscaler, told LinuxInsider.

Meanwhile, Android smartphones are growing in popularity. They have extended their lead in the United States and Canadian markets, according to IDC's worldwide mobile phone market report for Q2, 2011.

That will make for a bigger pool of targets.

"Android has the potential to become the dominant OS for smartphones," Sinha said. "And ... hackers will aggressively target Android."

Add in Google's support for NFC -- near field communications -- in Android; its launching of Google Wallet, which is undergoing field tests now; and PayPal's using NFC on Android to make payments easier, and we could have a bit of a problem.

But that's not all. Even if e-wallet features don't take off, NFC has another ace in the hole -- it lets owners of NFC-capable smartphone transfer documents by touching their devices together.

You can watch a YouTube video demoing that feature on the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N9 smartphone here.

The implications for enterprise security are vast, especially when you recall that the increasing consumerization of IT means people are using their own mobile devices at work.

Is Google's to blame for the increasing number of attacks on the Android OS because of Android's design and the hands-off policy Google maintains towards the OS? Will Android survive and be made more secure? Or will Google's laissez-faire attitude finally kill off the OS?

Google did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Follow the Money

In September, Fortinet came across a banking Trojan it named \u201cZitmo.\u201d That Trojan steals one-time banking passwords. It resurfaced in July.

The mobile malware threat is expected to grow, security experts warn.

"In addition to mobile banking, many retail commerce transactions are expected to take place on mobile phones, and the cybercriminals will go where the money is," Neil Daswani, CTO and co-founder of Dasient, told LinuxInsider.

However, we may have some time before mobile banking really becomes a major security issue.

Many banks still haven't enabled mobile transactions on their websites, indicated Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Trusteer.

"Since online fraud is mostly a big numbers game, attacking mobile bankers is not yet a profitable fraud operation," Boodaei remarked.

That situation will change soon. Trusteer predicts that within 12 to 24 months more than 5 percent of all Android phones, iPads and iPhones could become infected by mobile malware.

Preparing for the Mobile Malware Rush

Device makers and app developers have to shape up in preparation for the expected flood of attacks on NFC-enabled devices once mobile banking takes off.

"The NFC Forum defines the contactless protocol between devices, so much of the security is the responsibility of application providers and manufacturers," Debbie Arnold, the forum's director, told LinuxInsider.

The forum's role is just to define the contactless protocol between devices, Arnold said.

Was Android Built Wrong?

The problem lies in Android's security architecture, and the proof is that it's easy to build applications that can get access to sensitive operating system resources such as text messages, voice, location and more, Trusteer's Boodaei told LinuxInsider.

However, not everyone agrees this is really an issue.

"While the security architecture of Android as well as other mobile OSes can certainly be improved, just as desktop OS security has improved over the decades, the security architecture itself isn't responsible for malware propagation," Daswani said.

Tens of thousands of new malware binary variants are created for Windows and Mac OS, for example, Daswani pointed out. The problem of security isn't going away any time soon, he opined.

Permissions Are a Hollow Protection

In its defense, Google has repeatedly pointed out that all downloaded apps request permission to access resources on uses' smartphones, and users can just say no.

That isn't enough, Boodaei contends.

Users usually just say yes because many applications request access to an "extensive list" of resources, Boodaei explained.

Google could make Android's permissions model more fine-grained, Dasient's Daswani suggested.

For example, when an Android app requests access to the Internet, it gets access to everything, including malicious domains and websites, Daswani said. Instead, Google should perhaps restrict an app's access to the Internet to only what it actually needs.

"That follows the principle of least privilege, which is well-known in the security community,\u201d Daswani remarked.

Google's Slow Anti-Malware Shuffle

In addition, Google doesn't check apps before letting their authors post them on the Android Market. Also, Google has sometimes been criticized as slow to respond to complaints about apps containing malware.

"Distributing fraudulent Android applications is trivial," Trusteer's Boodaei alleged. "There are no real controls around the submission process that could identify and prevent the publication of malicious applications. Compared to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) App Store, the Android Market is the Wild West."

Further, a Google Web page requesting that Google review and take down inappropriate apps from the Android Market is hard to find, Boodaei said.

The form doesn't appear to be of much use, either, he said.

"We used it a few times with no results," Boodaei groused. "In order to have an application on the Android Market taken down, we had to use contacts within Google who are not available to the average user."

Google needs to make "major improvements" in its process of identifying and removing malicious apps from the Android Market, Boodaei said.

"Google already has a kill switch to remotely remove malicious apps, but this approach is reactive," ZScaler's Sinha stated. "They need a more proactive approach to screening and testing apps prior to allowing them on the market."

Google’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives

Google’s long expected second shot at taking on Facebook in the social networking space has arrived in the form of the Google+ Project. It has some interesting twists on the social networking model but is far from a Facebook-killer.

That Name

The terrible name is a bad start. Google+? Google+! I can’t even question or exclaim about the bad name without it looking bad in writing.

Pronounced “Google Plus,” the product is officially written as Google+ — making placing any punctuation after the name fairly awkward.

Seriously, I’m cursing whoever made the final decision to go with Google+ as a name. Wasn’t the Google +1 sharing service bad enough?

Now we have Google+, which in turn allows you to +1 things that you’ve Google+’d. My head hurts from writing that.

In this article, I’ll generally stick with the Google+ name except where Google Plus is more legible, due to punctuation.

The Google+ Project

What about the product itself? Google dubs Google+ as a “project” rather than a product, stressing it’s part of making Google itself more social rather than being a standalone social network to take on Facebook.

“It’s ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better and ‘project’ because it’s an ongoing set of products,” said Vic Gundotra, the senior vice president who oversees Google’s social products.

But is it Facebook competitor, I asked in a follow-up question. Google emailed back:

No. We realize that today people are increasingly connecting with one another on the web. But the ways in which we connect online are limited and don’t mimic our real-life relationships. The Google+ project is our attempt to make online sharing even better. We aren’t trying to replace what’s currently available, we just want to introduce a new way to connect online with the people that matter to you.

OK, but as the saying goes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. And Google+ looks like and quacks like Facebook in several ways.

Circles

Most important, Google+ is a social network of your friends, family and other contacts, a way to connect to these people, just like Facebook.

Unlike Facebook, Google+ is built from the ground up around the concept of sharing material with groups of people, called “Circles.” Here’s an example of how they look:

The idea is that you can easily drag-and-drop people into different types of Circles, which you can then use for sharing different types of things.

For example, you can create a “Family” circle where you might chose to share things only with family members in it, while another “Work” circle might contain work colleagues who only see what you share to that.

Google+ Circles Vs Facebook Lists & Groups

While Facebook might not have been built from the beginning with a Circles-like sharing concept, Facebook does currently have two features that are similar: Friend Lists & Groups.

Added in December 2007, Friend Lists allow you to share some of your Facebook information with specific groups of friends (or other selected contacts) that you create. They’re also supposed to allow you to group message people in a list, though I couldn’t get this to work, when I tested it today.

Friend Lists don’t allow for selective sharing. But the updated Facebook Groups feature thatcame out last October does provide this, a way to share what you want with whom you want.

How does Circles weight up against these? I can’t say first hand. The Google+ product wasn’t live for me to test when I wrote this (our hands-on review will come later today).

Friend Lists are nice in that if you pick one person, such as below where I selected Facebook communications chief Elliott Schrage, you get relevant suggestions that appear (other Facebook execs who’ve friended me on Facebook):

But that list can’t be used, as best I can tell, to start an associated group to share just to these people. Instead, when I tested today, I was still forced to make a group, then pick people individually to add to that.

So, the drag-and-drop interface of Circles looks appealing. Then again, if you have hundreds of “friends,” it still might turn into too much organization. Maybe people will use it to create some select groups that they really want (family, close friends, those in a club, etc.). But if it turns into a wonderful tool, it’s hard to imagine that Facebook couldn’t easily match it.

Who’s In Your Circle?

There’s no limit to the number of circles you can create. But where do the people come from who will be in your circles?

First, any contacts you’ve stored through the Google Contacts service will be available. If you have no contacts, you can import them through the CSV format, which many contact services will export out to.

Google also said that it is looking into ways to directly important contacts from Yahoo and Microsoft. Facebook wasn’t mentioned.

That’s not surprising. Facebook hasn’t allowed the export of friends’ email addresses, except to … Yahoo and Microsoft. The stories below explains more about this:

• Facebook: You’ve No Right To Export Email Addresses (Unless It’s To Yahoo & Microsoft)
• Facebook Messages: Export Of Facebook.com Addresses OK

What’s all this mean in practical terms? Everyone in Google+ will effectively be starting from scratch.

If you already use things like Gmail, you probably have Google Contacts that give you email addresses of your social network. If you don’t, you can import — and Yahoo and Microsoft may serve as go-betweens to help you bring information from Facebook into Google Plus.

From Email To Virtual Person

The bigger issue is that your contacts — be that from within Google or imported from Facebook — are basically just email addresses. The won’t have any social connection information with them.

Google Contacts won’t know that a particular person whose email address you have is friends with other people you know. A Facebook import won’t turn email addresses gathered from there into links with other people who use Facebook.

Instead, what will really jump start Google+ is if a significant number of people come into the system and start claiming profiles within it, effectively turning those email addresses into virtual people who have connections within Google Plus.

That’s a big if. If you’re already happy using Facebook, you may have no more incentive to use Google’s new social network than someone already happy using Google has to switch over to Bing. What you’re using is doing the job just fine.

Buzz Off Google Buzz

When people do get into the system, that does open up another way to add contacts. You’ll be able to search through other members who have registered.

But here’s the crazy thing. Those connections you may have already formed using Google Buzz? Remember, Google’s last attempt to take on Facebook from February 2010? None of that is being used for Google Plus. The two products are being kept completely separate.

I suspect Google’s trying to be as cautious as possible, in the wake of its settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (see Google Settles FTC Charges Over Buzz, Agrees To 20 Years Of Privacy Audits). Buzz seems tainted, so keeping Google+ isolated from that may be deemed the most prudent course.

And what’s the future for Buzz, with Google+ coming out? Google told me in a follow-up email:

The short answer is it won’t have any major impact on Buzz at launch. Buzz users will still see a Buzz tab on their Google profile, and Buzz will continue working as it always has. Google+ users can also be Buzz users or can decide to just share their content using one of the products. Over time, we’ll determine what makes the most sense in terms of integrating the products.

Google+ Stream

Now let’s talk about how you see what’s being shared by those in your network, as well as what you can specifically share.

Information appears in your “Stream,” which is akin to Facebook’s news feed. At the top of your stream is a sharing box. Actually, two sharing boxes:

In the new black navigation bar that began showing up for some people this week, there’s a “Share” area to the right side. That bar, by the way, has been dubbed the “One Google” bar, Google told me. No matter where you are on Google, you’ll have the ability to share something out to Google Plus.

In the Stream itself, there’s a longer box, where you can enter a status update or use icons to upload and share photo and videos. You can also share links or your location, if you’ve allowed Google to track that for you. On mobile devices, you can select from a drop-down of nearby places to check-in.

The check-in feature also raises questions about Google Latitude — does it get absorbed into Google+ eventually? What about HotPot?

What do you see from others? Here’s an example:

In this screenshot, the person is viewing what’s been shared only by people in their “Bike Geeks” groups, as highlighted on the left side. By selecting another circle that’s listed, they would see only information being shared by that group.

Friends, Followers & Off-Network Friends

As with Twitter (or with Facebook, when it comes to fan pages), it’s possible with Google+ to follow other people on the network, even if they don’t reciprocate and follow you or friend you back.

Google says that if you follow someone this way, you’ll only see what they choose to share with everyone publicly. If they share some things more restrictively, with particular circles, for example, those outside of those circles won’t see that.

Somewhat related, you can be friends with people who aren’t formally part of Google Plus. If they’re an email-only contact and never formally join the service, you can still add them to circles and share with them.

When you do this, they’ll apparently be sent an email with whatever you wanted to share, a picture, an update and so on.

The downside is that if they’re not on Google Plus, they’ll get a notification anytime you share anything. So if you’re a big sharer, potentially you might hit some of your friends with a lot of email.

Where’s +1?

In the stream example above, there was a +1 button at the bottom of the photo. Yes, anything you like within Google+ can be +1′d, in the way that anything you like on Facebook can be liked with Facebook Like buttons.

If you do that, do your friends on Google+ see that action, in the way that friends on Facebook may see what you like? Nope. Not to my understanding,

Further more, all those Google +1 buttons that are now starting to appear on Google search worldwide? Those Google +1 buttons that publishers have diligently been adding to their sites since they were released earlier this month? Nothing from those button clicks flows back into Google Plus.

It’s crazy. It makes no sense. It’s as if Facebook launched its Like buttons but forgot to hook them up to flow information back into Facebook.

Right now, it remains the case that if you want to see what someone has +1′d, then you have to remember to go to their Google Profile page on a regular basis, then hope they’ve enabled the +1 tab on that profile, then rinse and repeat for other people.

Google told me that it would be “logical” to see +1 flow into Google+ and that “one could guess eventually” it will happen. So, I’m pretty sure we will see this happen. But when it will launch is unclear, and it really feels like an incredible mistake that it’s not part of the launch.

Google Sparks: Tips On What To Share

Time for more features. What if you started a social network and no one knew what to share? That’s a problem that Google Sparks is intended to solve.

Think of it like Google Alerts made to flow into Google Plus. Google Sparks lets you follow topics of interest:

You can browse suggestions or set up your own keyword-based searches. Then when you select a “Sparks” link, you’ll get a feed of search results that you might wish to share. Here’s an example of what Sparks might show for a fashion topic:

The relevancy is supposed to be tweaked to find especially sharable content that people are already clicking on, things that are very visual with photo and pictures.

I got a brief demo trying two searches, and the results didn’t thrill me. They were OK, but they didn’t feel particularly shareable. Still, the feature will probably be useful to some, and I can’t really assess the relevancy either way on such limited testing.

Hangouts: Group Video Chat

Google seems to be hanging most of its hopes that Google+ will attract people from Facebook on two main features, I’d say. One is the aforementioned Circles sharing feature. The other is the Hangout video chat feature.

With Hangouts, up to 10 people at a time can all interact through video:

The demo I saw of the system was compelling. As one participant spoke, the main image automatically changed to that person. You can also play video that everyone watches.

Gundotra spent some time talking with me about how Google has examined the social dynamics of video chat, to get people more comfortable participating. The key is to get several people all involved casually, rather than to barge in with a solitary invite.

He used a “talking to your neighbor” analogy to explain more. You’re probably are hesitant to knock a neighbor’s door and disturb them just because you want to talk. But if you saw them outside on their porch, Gundotra said, you’d probably feel better saying “Hi” when passing by. If two neighbors were sitting and talking, you’d probably feel rude not also stopping and chatting.

Hence the Hangouts name. When someone launches a Hangout, this shows up on the feed that goes out to their friends. As more people join, the notifications get updated to show the number participating. As that number rises, Google says even more people are compelled to take part.

The party ends at 10, however. No more can participate for scale reasons and also because the group dynamics get too hard, Gundotra said. If someone leaves, others can come in.

The puzzling thing to me is that Google’s not made it possible for anyone to stream the chat out to non-participants. If you have a group of friends, and not all can take part at once, others might be interested just to listen in.

Beyond that, Hangouts seems like a pretty awesome tool for those who wanted to record video shows. But there’s no way to save what happens.

Huddle: Group Text Chat

Somewhat related to Hangouts is Huddle, a group text chat service. I can’t really tell you more than that. Google didn’t cover this during my talk with them about Google Plus last week, so I’ve only got a screenshot for you and a promise will cover it more in our coming hands-on piece:

Huddle is for Android 2.0+ phones, iPhone 4.0+ phones and SMS, Google tells me.

Instant Upload

The last major feature of Google+ is called “Instant Upload.”

For those with Android phones, you can have any picture you take be uploaded to a centralized — and private — photo album area.

Google tells me they hope to bring it to other phones, as well.

Benefits of Programming in Ruby on Rails

There are several programming languages that to-be programmers (or current programmers) can choose from. For first-time programmers, choosing a programming language can be difficult. There are many programming languages that are dying out, just aren’t popular, or are just generally hard to learn. It would be a shame for any first-time programmer to purchase books to learn a language to find that it is too difficult. It would also be a shame to learn a programming language that has no application at work. Ruby is a great programming language because it offers a great feature called Ruby on Rails. Rails is a web framework that can be used by programmers to speed up development.

The programming language, Ruby, was created in the mid 1990’s in Japan, by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Ruby is based on Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp and was written to create a programming language that, according to Matsumoto, “was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python.”

One of the goals of Ruby is to allow the simple and fast creation of web applications. The language itself satisfies this goal. Because of this, there is much less tedious work with this language than many other programming languages. Ruby is also free of charge. It is also free to copy, use, modify, and distribute. Since Ruby can be modified, programmers can make necessary changes and can code without feeling restricted. Another feature of Ruby is its mark-and-sweep garbage collection which allows programmers the ability to code without having to worry about the need to maintain reference counts in extension libraries. Also, if an operating system allows for it, Ruby can dynamically load extension libraries. Ruby currently ranks as the 9th most popular programming language in the world. There are many online guides where Ruby programmers to-be can learn how to program in Ruby.

Ruby on Rails, often simply called Rails, is an open source web application framework that was designed for Ruby by David Heinemeier Hansson and was released in July 2004. Ruby on Rails makes use of an object relational mapping layer known as the ActiveRecord. Because of this, programmers do not have to specify database column names in class definitions. Rails will retrieve this information on its own from the database based on the class name. Rails also has a testing framework built in which allows programmers to write test cases which helps them create more reliable, robust code.

Ruby on Rails Proves it Deserves the Hype (JAVA VS RUBY)

With the multitude of programming languages out there such as Fortran, Java, C++ and C#, you may wonder why Ruby on Rails has suddenly become such a hot topic in the development world. Created in the late 1990's by an individual in Japan, the Ruby programming language had a cult following but never reached top-tier status. In 2004, a company called 37 Signals released a Web programming framework called Rails, which was originally developed for their own in-house projects. Rails was written using the Ruby programming language. It is the combination of Ruby and Rails together that has generated notable excitement in the development community, and the emerging language and application framework is proving to be a game-changer to the world of Web application development.

Ruby on Rails' Impact on Productivity

Rails is an integrated framework that utilizes the dynamic nature of the object-oriented Ruby programming language. Rails developers emphasize features of the framework for productivity rather than tools, and they take a common approach to Web architecture that should satisfy the needs of a large portion of the Web application projects in the wild.

As Rails was developed, the innovators of the framework realized that there were a multitude of features inherent to the framework that could benefit all Web applications. Rails is an extremely productive framework for database-backed Web applications. It is different from other frameworks in that it preaches convention over configuration. Typically, if you were building a computer program, you had to start from scratch and rely heavily on the skills and experience of the team's architect to develop and adhere to standards of writing good software. Rails primarily uses conventions to avoid configuration when possible, resulting in time saving and enhanced productivity. In a study by IBM, Rails applications needed a fraction of the configuration code of Java counterparts, often by a factor of ten or more.¹ Where the programmer must specify configuration, Rails usually relies on Ruby programming language to provide configuration. The strategy saves developers many lines of code and simplifies the code that does need to be written. By taking mundane but essential decisions away from the developer, productivity increases substantially because more time and attention is spent satisfying the customer's requirements rather than the technical plumbing that can burden most projects.

Ruby on Rails is known for its ability to build Web applications quickly and with ease. For first-time users of Java, it could take about five to ten days to build a moderately useful Web application that will communicate with a database using accepted Java Web best-practices such as separating business logic, from display logic (commonly referred to as Model-View-Controller). With no prior training on Ruby on Rails, it takes about one day to accomplish the same goal using the Ruby programming language. In several more days, it is possible to build a relatively complete Web application with Ruby on Rails.

In Java, a developer has countless decisions to make about how to proceed when communicating with a database. Should I use JDBC? Should I use an Object-Relational-Mapping (ORM) library, and, if I use an ORM, which one should I choose? TopLink? Hibernate? JDO? Do I need to use EJB2 or EJB3? Rails has an ORM database layer built into its framework called ActiveRecord. Another useful feature of Rails is scaffolding -- Similar to how a building under construction uses scaffolding to assist in the construction of the final structure, Rails can generate code called scaffolding that can be used to quickly put up functional Web pages that talk to a database and allow you to add, delete and change information quickly and with very little coding. As previously mentioned, in other languages you have to select naming conventions and define the general structure of the file system, while Rails utilizes conventions and the Ruby programming language so that all of that is provided for you. Managers will appreciate the fact that Rails minimizes configuration and encourages standardization. This feature enables programming skills to be more portable. Rails developers can move from one project to another with ease, since standards common to all development projects, such as naming conventions, directory structures, unit-test frameworks, and interface templates, are already decided, with working samples always available.

Another feature of Ruby on Rails that enhances developer productivity is the rapid feedback loop. The feedback loop is the amount of time between making a change in code and seeing the results in the execution of your application on the screen. In Rails, you get nearly-instant feedback as you code. There is no compile or packaging phase needed. You can immediately load a browser page to see the results of your changes. Managers should take note of this feature, because with enhanced productivity comes improved client satisfaction. Say you are in a meeting with a client, and they have some edits that they would like for you to incorporate into their Web application. With Ruby on Rails, you can make changes promptly and see the results immediately, improving the overall client experience.

It is important to note that introducing a radically different framework such as Ruby on Rails can be detrimental to a company's development, testing, and production infrastructure. For example, Rails applications are installed differently than common development platforms such as Java or Microsoft's .NET. Operations managers need to understand how to deploy it effectively.

But Rails acceptance is already being witnessed in large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems supports a project called JRuby that enables Ruby applications to run in a Java Virtual Machine. Efforts like JRuby will make it easier for companies to transition and adapt to Ruby on Rails since it will become a part of a familiar structure. Apple Computer has announced that Ruby on Rails will be included in the next release of its flagship operating system, OS X 10.5 (Leopard). And, even Microsoft has included Ruby programming language support in its newest rich-Internet framework, Silverlight. The world's largest technical publisher, O'Reilly Media, has even acknowledged Ruby's rapid growth and now considers it a major language with triple digit growth between 2006 to 2007. (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~3/117292190/state_of_the_co_10.html)

A common question regarding Ruby on Rails relates to its performance relative to its peers. Some companies claim that Ruby on Rails does not perform as well as comparable systems. Comments such as these must be looked at objectively and balanced against productivity gains. Managers then need to make the decision of whether it is cheaper to hire people or purchase additional hardware, and chances are they will find that purchasing more hardware makes better financial sense.

Conclusion

People are paying more and more attention to Ruby on Rails, and for good reason. With the advent of the Rails framework, the Ruby programming language is making its way towards the top. By focusing on convention over configuration, Ruby on Rails is lowering the barriers of entry to programming and positively impacting employee productivity-ultimately proving that all of the hype is true and well-deserved.

Programming Language Market Share (Java vs php vs ruby) (POPULARITY OF PROGRAMMING LAGUAGES)

source: www.zacker.org

Popular programming language ACCORDING TO MARKET SHARE......(%):

1. JAVA

2. PHP

3.PERL

4. C#

5. PYTHON

6. RUBY

PHP vs Java vs Ruby

This week, a lot of focus is on the other open frameworks that have risen during the same era, and their comparative value in a post open source Java world. One such take is from well-known Sun insider, Tim Bray, who spoke at last week's International PHP Conference in Germany.

Bray, who is Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems, co-creator of theXML 1.0 and XML Namespace standards, co-founder of Open-Text, and contributor to the Atom Publishing standard (whew!) spoke in a presentation entitled “How to combine PHP technology with Java based on Enterprise Systems” .

In the slide below, Bray outlines the basic advantages of each of these three platforms (or rather the two languages and one framework if you are scoring at home). In perhaps in a nod to his new employer, Sun, Bray totally omits any mention of .NET or smaller products like Adobe's Flex/ColdFusion platform.

His idea, if you are able to take it on the surface only, is to rate your priorities of: 1) Scalability, 2) Dev Speed, 3) Dev Tools, and 4) Maintainability. In this highly generalized approach, you could theoretically pick your web application building language/framework based on only these priorities.

Tim weighs-in heavy on the maintainability side, and we'd tend to agree with him. To quote:

“Good apps, once built, tend to be in production for an astonishingly long time. Which means that they have to be maintained for an astonishingly long time. Which means that maintainability is important. There are a lot of things that go into maintainability, but I suggest that the biggies are object-orientation, MVCarchitecture, code readability, and code size.”

On the maintainability side Tim places Ruby on Rails out front. Quoting him again, Tim describes why RoR is in the lead here.

“Mostly because there's less code. The fact that Ruby forces MVC on you helps too, also the fact that the templating and [Object Relational Mapping (ORM)] and testing and application code are all so tightly integrated helps. Bear in mind that we still don't know how well Rails is going to work outside of the CRUD-centered greenfield app space where it shines.”

Tim's metrics don't really exist on a quantitative level nor are they based on any published statistics — just a very informed intellect and a privileged position. Obviously, additional parameters such as total cost of ownership and native security (PHP, we are looking at you) should also play a big role the decision making process.

As you can probably guess, in response to this presentation, the proponents of Java,PHP and Ruby are lighting the Internet aflame in defense of their platform of choice and at the same time nay-saying their fellow players. While very entertaining and sometimes educational to follow, not much is going to be gained from this bickering.

Bray concludes the presentation with the Rodney King-esque statement “One way or another we all have to integrate.”

The reality is that there are a great number of ways to hone-in on the language or framework choice for a web application. Many factors have to be considered and weighed against each other. The beauty of what we have today is that there ARE a great many choices out there, much more-so than even a few years ago.

The fact that open source options are being stacked up against the likes of Java and .NET, and have a similar levels of support is a blessing. Today, with the open-sourcing of Java, we have a new entry onto the field. Rather than exclude one or another, this arrival is going to make the open source web world, warmer, more sophisticated, and for better or worse, a little sunnier.