In staking their future on Java, some developers like IBM are striving to turn their investments into something that could loosen Wintel's stranglehold on the industry.
Others simply take the approach similar to any T-shirt vendor hawking goods near a blockbuster event. Founded last December, Magelang Institute, a Java consulting firm in San Francisco, has been doing brisk business peddling Java courses to anyone trying to learn the programming language.
Magelang charges its corporate clients $1,000 each for a three-day Java class. For a five-day class, the fee goes up to $1,500. Demand for these classes, which have been held in 18 cities, has been so strong that Magelang has put off developing Java applications for corporate customers, said Terence Parr, its president. ``It's been incredibly exciting,'' he said.
Michael Shoffner, vice president of strategic development at Prominence.com, Chapel Hill, N.C., is equally bullish on Java. Having spent the past year developing Java programs, Prominence.com is expected soon to release a product called Interject that will allow Web designers to bring a higher degree of collaborative features onto their home pages, Shoffner said.
That's just the beginning. Shoffner aims to build a courseware based on Interject and other technologies his firm has developed. In the works: a deal with Prentice-Hall to publish a book on Java programming.
Shoffner expects his company ``to do a couple of million dollars in sales easily next year.''

Underscoring the emergence of this Java cottage industry, corporations are planning to use Java front-ends to improve their customer relations and boost revenues at the same time.
RR Donnelley & Sons Co., for instance, has invested between $500,000 and $1 million over the past year to develop a Java front-end that could breathe new life to its printing and publishing system, said Tom Boos, senior vice president in charge of information services and development at Coris, a division of RR Donnelley in Chicago.
What Boos has in mind is a Web-enabling enterprise publishing system that allows customers of RR Donnelley to output titles to the media of their choice. Instead of sending disks to and from its customers, RR Donnelley plans to use the front-end to immediately download changes that its customers have made over the Internet.
In the near future, customers will be able to make changes and place orders on how many reprints they would like over the Internet. The payback: ``We haven't had any return yet. But we expect a significant return with a lot more interest in the system among our customers,'' Boos said.

Indeed, Java has become a catalyst for developers of different industries to work together. GroupWorks Technology, Evanston, Ill., struck a deal with ElderCare Information Network Inc., Northfield, Ill., to build a Java-based health-care directory for nursing home providers and suppliers trying to reach potential customers around the country.
While GroupWorks had no experience in the health-care market, ElderCare knew nothing about Java development. The alliance finally led GroupWorks to buy a stake in ElderCare, which will give its new investor a cut of its revenue once the system is up and running.
``They had the concept, but they didn't have the technical expertise,'' said Scott Kerber, president of GroupWorks. ``It's a good deal for both of us.'''