For Motorola's Redshaw, that strategy of covering your bases with multiple standards extends to the choice between MicrosoftMicrosoft's .Net and Sun Microsystems' J2EE as development platforms for Web services applications. In his view, there isn't really a choice: Most companies, he thinks, will have to invest in both, as Motorola has. "It's strategically dangerous to go down one path or another," says Redshaw. Most established companies already use J2EE, he notes, but "if you say, I don't like Microsoft, and get stuck in stupid politics, you may get leapfrogged." Alles zu Microsoft auf CIO.de

While it's hard to know exactly how much it's going to cost companies that maintain both platforms, Tom Welsh, senior consultant with Cutter, says to plan for purchasing software and servers to support both environments, as well as staffing up with trained programmers. "Few people are dynamic enough to be conversant in both .Net and J2EE," notes Welsh. It's also necessary to account for the cost of managing and maintaining the two platforms. Yes, those costs add up, but as Welsh says, "It's a mistake to hope for the benefits of IT when you grudge the time, money and sheer effort necessary to understand what it's all about."

RISK NO. 3: Vendors might go out of business.
MITIGATION: Look past a vendor's software to its management.

As with any emerging technology, not all of the software you need can be purchased from well-established vendors. There's a risk that you could choose a vendor that goes under or a product line that doesn't survive.

"Theoretically, you'd say you have to let this space mature, you have to let the rate of change amongst the vendors slow down, and you have a much higher chance of picking the right choices," says Motorola's Redshaw. "It's nice, safe, probably a good approach for some companies. But if you're using old 'me too' technology, someone who is several steps ahead of you may have competitive advantage." Redshaw is willing to accept, as the premium Motorola pays for being an early adopter, the possibility that some of the vendors he picks may not survive.

To mitigate that risk, Redshaw recommends that companies look past the capabilities vendors offer in their current products and conduct due diligence on their R&D plans. "The tricky part is to look under the covers, to see what their underlying architecture is," he says. "We're trying to pick the horse that's going to win 20 races over the next two seasons."