Since our inception, PT. Axis Global Integrasi always strives to provide the best solution to our customer by utilizing the best enterprise application platform and the most excellent open-source technology in building up our solutions.

Why Open Source technology ?

We believe that with open source technology, a company can lower it's IT investment TCO and at the same time can increase its performance and efficiency.

1. Low Cost


Cost is the most obvious benefit when people compare open-source software to proprietary software.
How does open source achieve this low cost?

We believe that the open source development model is the most efficient way to create software. With proprietary software development, each software company creates an isolated software silo. Meanwhile, their competitors are spending resources to create software that does almost the exact same function! Compare that to the open source model, where worldwide resources can be shared to develop an application. Some people claim that while open source software may be free to acquire, it has a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). These studies have been quite controversial because they are usually funded by Microsoft. Talk about a conflict of interest!

Even if Linux currently has higher integration costs, you can expect these costs to only become smaller with time. This is due to the fact that open source software is becoming more widely deployed and easier to manage. This means that there will be less training and maintenance costs to be accounted for in a TCO study.


2. Security


Open source software is usually considered to be more secure than proprietary software. We believe this can be attributed to two driving factors. The first factor is that the source code of the software is publicly available. This means that if the community is large enough, there will be many programmers analyzing the code. This has been stated as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

The second factor is very closely tied to the first. If programmers know that their code will go through a worldwide peer review, it provides an incentive for them to create high-quality code.


3. Continuity


With proprietary software, if the software company goes out of business then the software will simply die with the company. It is also possible for the software company to decide to stop maintaining a piece of software. In both cases, you are out of luck if your business depends on that software.

With open source software, you are not dependent on any one entity for the project to stay alive. If the current developers stop working on the software, anyone can use the source code to simply continue from where they stopped.


4. Flexibility


With traditional proprietary software, you were at the mercy of the software developer to listen to requests from users. It is common for business needs to dictate the future direction of software. In these cases, the software company will listen to large customers or a majority of their customers. If you are a small customer and have a unique need, it is unlikely that the software developer will be responsive to your requests.

With open source, you can add the features that your business needs and you can fix the bugs that affect you. There is no requirement to work with the developers, although the community benefits when you contribute your changes to the project.

What do you do if the open source developers are impossible to work with? In these extreme cases, it may be best to create a fork of the original project. Open source provides you the freedom to work with developers that meet your needs.

Proprietary software does not offer this freedom; in fact the industry does its best to prevent it. This is often called vendor lock-in, which is a method that software companies use to prevent customers from leaving. Open source companies prefer to simply use good service to ensure customer loyalty. Which method do you prefer?

Why Java and J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) ?

J2EE is an industry standard and is the result of a large industry initiative led by Sun Microsystems. The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) was designed to simplify complex problems with the development, deployment, and management of multi-tier enterprise solutions.

The J2EE camp's goal is to give customers choice of vendor products and tools, and to encourage best-of-breed products to emerge through competition. The only way this would ever happen is if the industry as a whole were bought-into J2EE. To secure buy-in, Sun collaborated with other vendors of eBusiness platforms, such as BEA, IBM, and Oracle, in defining J2EE. Sun then initiated the Java Community Process (JCP) to solicit new ideas to improve J2EE over time. The reason Sun did this is because they had to do so to achieve success -- the best way to secure buy-in to an idea is to involve others in defining that idea.

The J2EE architecture is based on the Java programming language. What's exciting about Java is that it enables organizations to write their code once, and deploy that code onto any platform. The process is as follows:

1. Developers write source code in Java.
2. The Java code is compiled into bytecode, which is a cross-platform intermediary, halfway between source code and machine language.
3. When the code is ready to run, the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) interprets this bytecode and executes it at run-time.

J2EE is an application of Java. Your J2EE components are transformed into bytecode and executed by a JRE at runtime. Even the containers are typically written in Java.

The most important advantages of J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) are:

1. Supports implementation of scalable heavy-duty solutions.
2. Multiplatform, multi-vendor, available implementations selected by best-of-breed-principle.
3. Component and transaction oriented, distributed technology.
4. Ample ways of accessing different database systems.
5. Supported by important playmakers like Oracle, IBM, HP, Sun, BEA, Novell and others.
6. Rich supply of various tools for RAD (Rapid Application Development)
7. Minimal binding to operating systems and suppliers, portable applications.
8. Many opensource-implementations available, may offer clustered enterprise application servers with no licence costs and low TCO.
9. Full support for XML and webservices.
10. J2EE is being marketed by an entire industry
11. J2EE is a proven platform, with a few new web services APIs. .NET is a rewrite and introduces risk as with any first-generation technology
12. Existing J2EE code will translate into a J2EE web services system without major rewrites. Not true for Windows DNA code ported to .NET.
13. NET web services are not interoperable with current industry standards. Their BizTalk framework has proprietary SOAP extensions and does not support ebXML.
14. J2EE is a more advanced programming model, appropriate for well-trained developers who want to build more advanced object models and take advantage of performance features
15. J2EE lets you take advantage of existing hardware you may have
16. J2EE gives you platform neutrality, including Windows. You also get good (but not free) portability. This isolates you from heterogeneous deployment environments.
17. J2EE has a better legacy integration story through the Java Connector Architecture (JCA)
18. J2EE lets you use any operating system you prefer, such as Windows, UNIX, or mainframe. Developers can use the environment they are most productive in.
19. J2EE lets you use Java, which is better than C# due to market-share and maturity. According to Gartner, there are 2.5 million Java developers. IDC predicts this will grow to 4 million by 2003. 78% universities teach Java, and 50% of universities require Java.
20. We would not want to use any language other than C# or Java for development of new mission-critical solutions, such as a hacked object-oriented version of C, VB, or COBOL.
21. We believe that it is better as an ISV and consulting company, we are going with J2EE because we cannot control our customers' target platforms. We believe this application availability will result in J2EE beginning to dominate more and more as time goes on.