A new business cycle is sweeping the Internet technology world, one that now demands that companies start competing with each other, not only for new customers, but also - and perhaps even more crucially in a time of shrinking revenues - to retain the ones they have.

In this new cycle Java as usual acts as a focal point, because in such a phase the overriding need is for an enterprise to contradistinguish itself from its competitors, and what better way to do so than by providing not just better customer support for existing products or services (everyone tries that), but also entirely new services.

This is, of course, more or less where Java came into the Internet technology arena in the first place. Developing a customer-facing, product-support strategy is one thing, but actually delivering a great customer experience is another, and some of the articles in this month's J2SE section directly address the bumps in the road that lead to successful Java-based implementations.

José María Barrera looks at the best way to use the Java reflection classes; Mark Dykstra examines how to eliminate multithreaded errors; and Thomas Hammell invites us to "drag-and-drop" into Java. These writer-developers, and others like them, are what make JDJ the leading print and online resource for Java developers in the new business cycle as in the old.

Getting the Edge on Web Services
One of the liveliest new e-business battlegrounds will undoubtedly be Web services. Those of you reading this issue of JDJ prior to the JDJEdge 2001 Conference & Expo, which is being presented in New York later this month by SYS-CON Events, may already have made up your mind to sample some of the sessions at the Web Services Edge Conference & Expo that SYS-CON is colocating with JDJEdge at the New York Hilton.

If so, you'll have the benefit of hearing firsthand the views of those in the forefront of the paradigm that promises to do for distributed computing what Captain Cook did for Botany Bay: put it on the map. If not, try and come even if it's only at the last minute: there isn't an event anywhere like it on the East Coast. Web services will be the theme of a keynote discussion panel that the two conferences will be holding.

So if you're wondering what James Gosling thinks about it all, or what a Java-based vendor such as PointBase is doing in this "brave new Web services world", or where BEA Systems' Scott Dietzen thinks it's all headed, try and make it to the N.Y. Hilton, September 23-26.

While there, you'll also have an opportunity to savor keynote addresses from such luminaries as David Litwack, CEO of SilverStream; Gregg Kiessling, cofounder and CEO of Sitraka Software; Yogesh Gupta, CTO of Computer Associates; and Dr. Alan E. Baratz, CEO of Zaplet, Inc. - which, at an event already offering Kevin Lynch, president of products, Macromedia Inc., and Rick Ross, president of the 54,000-strong Java Lobby, is quite a lineup.

If you haven't had the pleasure of hearing Sun's James Gosling speak, remember that he's not only the "father of Java," but has also built satellite data-acquisition systems, a multiprocessor version of UNIX, several compilers, mail systems, window managers, a WYSIWYG text editor, a constraint-based drawing editor - and, oh, yes, the Emacs text editor for UNIX systems. When it's time for audience questions, be sure to ask him just what lies inside the cover of his PhD thesis, "The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints."

For us mere mortals who never made it to Stanford or Carnegie Mellon in the crucial late '70s when Internet technology was in its incubation, JDJEdge 2001 promises to be a great eye-opener! These are truly the Java movers and shakers, and I for one wouldn't miss it for the world.