Monday, 16 June 2008

Time for a name change? JDeveloper -> Fusion Developer

I'm sitting in on the first day at the ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference, the Fusion Middleware Symposium, and it struck me I think JDeveloper is a poorly branded product.

From a technical point of view, Oracle has massively expanding the product beyond its humble Java roots, from the inclusion of SOA/BPEL, through to growing WebCenter support, and the return of SQL Developer as a plug-in (or spin off, take your pick). In turn the traditional code-centric Java ADF applications are being left behind, replaced with exceedingly declarative solutions in both ADF BC and ADF Faces RC (in fact I've recently completed day long demonstrations of JDev 11g without writing a single line of Java code!).

This is not to say JDeveloper doesn't still support the "J" as such (J being Java), but it's just one part in a larger tool that has broaden its horizons.

From a marketing point of view, the "J" branding is an interesting problem for JDeveloper and Oracle because Java has been taking a bad rap for at least the last 5 years if not more giving JDeveloper a bad name by association. When you've a tool that has so many technologies in it besides Java, yet it is avoided and possibly despised because of its association with Java, this makes it a hard sell. With the "J" in the name it's also difficult to differentiate the tool from any other Java IDE out there. JDeveloper has so much more in it besides Java support, it's not just a simple IDE anymore but a fully-fledged "Service" Development Environment. Yet the Java developers are still comparing JDeveloper to Netbeans and Eclipse for is text-editor features, which is comparing apples to oranges.

Maybe it's time JDeveloper changed its name. Maybe, and I'm going to go out on a limb here, JDeveloper should consider a name change like, drum roll please........

"Fusion Developer"

Then again, if the Oracle Fusion marketing label becomes as despised as Java, maybe a better name would be:

"Oracle Developer" .... or .... "Oracle Developer Suite"

Or my favourite:

"!Apex"

I'm sure Oracle would welcome other more "appropriate" suggestions. Would anybody like to put a few ideas forward?
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