Corporate Australia is embroiled in a race but the competition is invisible to all but a few. It is taking place in the bowels of the companies, where software developers labour to build and maintain the programs that keep the engines of commerce running.

Microsoft is in the unusual position of being a struggling underdog, despite the efforts of its usually effective marketing colossus. But developers won't have tools forced down their throats. Java, particularly since the launch of J2EE several years ago proved its value in building business-critical applications, has been going from strength to strength.

Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft. But in software development, at least, the tables have turned - J2EE is now considered by many to be the safest choice for a risk-averse business world.

Java has matured from a way to display animated webpages, into a full-fledged application environment that is the de facto standard for enterprise development. Its popularity has fostered a global community of developers living the vision that Sun's software engineers dreamed a decade ago.

They were helped by another philosophical foe of Microsoft: the open source movement. Once maligned as the products of hobbyists with little business value, innumerable open source components provide J2EE features that are regularly updated and easily integrated into other applications.

The wealth of open source libraries means "we get a lot of things for free that are stable, tested and mature, and make life easier," says Dion Gillard, technical director of Multitask Consulting, a Sydney developer that uses J2EE for 90 per cent of its work.

Multitask last year built Pizza Hut's online ordering system in J2EE, running under IBM WebSphere on an IBM iSeries (AS/400) server, and recently used the free JBoss application server and a host of open source tools to revamp Sony Music's e-commerce website.

Open source tools are cheaper than proprietary products, something that appeals to corporate customers Gillard says are most concerned with value.

"The people you're dealing with in these organisations are pretty savvy and aware of what's out there," he says. "They're asking why they should pay for an application server when they can get the same things for free using open source."