August 14, 2000

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The New Developer Portals

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More on components:

EETimes Managing redundant components (7/24/00) Electronic Buyers' News Special Report: Distribution -- Surviving the online jungle (7/10/00) Electronic Buyers' News Solectron finding a way out (6/19/00)

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Still, these small companies say they can handle the big guys. And on the new developer portals, their components sit right next to those of the big-name companies. "There's almost an infinite demand for software," Stack says, as an encouragement to smaller companies.

In the past year there's been a growth in the number of Web sites dedicated to the concept of making components readily available to developers. The advent of the Web has made it easier for thousands of developers to communicate with each other, stay in touch with what their colleagues are developing, and learn something new. These sites not only offer components to sample, test, or purchase, they also facilitate communication with other developers through messages and bulletin-board postings.

If developers can't find the components they need, they can post a request for proposal asking other developers to create a component for them. In some cases, project teams have been able to avoid major development efforts, thanks to a tip from another developer.

"When an RFP goes up on the site, a lot of people can comment on it," says Collab.Net.'s Barry. "They don't have to bid on it--they can just offer comments on its validity and say whether it exists. There have been times when people have asked, 'Why are you trying to rewrite this when the component already exists?' "

There are a number of developer portals where programmers can check out the code that's out there, make requests for components, and/or hire the hosting firm for their consulting and development services. These sites offer thousands of components from a variety of developers, ranging in price from free to tens of thousands of dollars. They also offer a number of advantages to buying directly from a vendor. For starters, they can act as a quality filter.

Component-based development will increase as time goes on, analysts say. By 2003, at least 70% of new applications will be built primarily from software components and application frameworks, according to Gartner Group. The reasons are simple: reduced time to market and reduced cost of development.

This will make component-based development not just convenient, but necessary. Systems integrators are the biggest source of components right now, Diamelle's Shah says. "Companies are trying to build solutions quickly for their clients and they have almost no time to build them," he says. "Even large companies are coming to integrators because they recognize that they can speed up their time by using some components."

Dwyer predicts that sites like Flashline.com and ComponentSource.com will become a more natural way of buying needed code.

"From a software perspective, they're not any different than what we're used to in an application or hardware distribution," he says. "You don't buy Office from Microsoft. You go to a central place with components from different vendors. That's the value--single-stop shopping for a wide variety of components."

Component sites also offer a second value: certification. "As a clearinghouse, they don't just accept anyone's components; they accept components that have tested well and work well, and they're offering certification as a value-added service," Dwyer says. "Suppliers like that because passing certification is an advantage. Which do you think they will be able to sell faster--tested software or untested software?"

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Illustration by Laura Coyle

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