MAKATI CITY, Philippines (Aug. 01, 2011): “We have more demand than we canaccommodate,” shared Calen Legaspi, CEO of Orange & Bronze Software Labs, andTechnology Director of the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), in an interviewduring the Java 7 release party held recently at their headquarters, where over a hundred Javadevelopers were in attendance.
“We have more projects coming in than we can handle, from our local clients such as SmartCommunications and Banco de Oro, to our offshore clients such as Cisco Systems,” Legaspiadded.He said that the reason for this is because Java is the only platform available to build large-scale enterprise systems that are not tied to a particular operating system or vendor. The closestcompetitor to Java is Microsoft.Net, which must run on the Windows operating system.
“Other competing technologies have not yet been able to reach the maturity or industryacceptance of Java. This is why companies with huge scalability and security requirements likeGoogle, Twitter, Ebay and LinkedIn use Java for much of their core systems,” Legaspi said.
The latest release of Java introduces new language features to boost developer productivity,better performance, and support for multiple languages. The multiple language feature willsupport the current trend of new programming languages and frameworks that will run on top ofthe Java platform.
“Some industry analysts such as Forrester are saying that Java is on the decline. What they don’tunderstand is many of the ‘new’ technologies supposedly replacing Java are actually built on topof Java. These are technologies like Spring, Hibernate, JRuby and Grails,” he explained.
Legaspi, who is one of the co-founders of the 2,000-strong premier local Java community--PinoyJava Users Group (PinoyJUG), said that right now, Filipino Java developers are among the mosttalented in the world, as they are able to adapt to the software language much faster.Legaspi believes that the Philippines needs to take advantage of the current demand for Javadevelopment by supporting the educational system, something that he and his company activelypartakes in.
Orange & Bronze provides free training and curriculum support for faculty in the ComputerScience and IT departments, either through their own initiatives or through cooperation with thePSIA. Legaspi developed the Java curricula for the Technical Education and Skills Development(TESDA) Train-for-Work program. This is part of long-term goals by the Philippines tostrengthen the Java development skills.
“Our goal as an organization is to ensure that our developers are at par with internationalstandards and be able to adapt to changes when needed. Our country has so much potential andwe can remain a major provider of Java-based development as long as we are continuouslytrained in the latest technologies,” said Legaspi, who also sits on the Commission on HigherEducation (CHED) Technical Panel for Computer Science.
