Beans from competitors' software systems can also fit and work together, like identical bricks from different construction sites. Oracle financial software, for example, can be more easily paired with ATG customer-management software. Beans have another big advantage. A company can work with individual Beans instead of installing and upgrading one giant piece of software, thus avoiding the expensive hassle of big upgrades. Just pluck out the order-form Bean and upgrade it.
Beans also save time.
Plenty, if the interest of industry heavyweights is any indication. IBM is an aggressive backer, as is Oracle. If EJBs are the Net's building blocks, extensible markup language, which was created at about the same time, is the mortar between them. Commerce One Inc., for example, uses XML to tie the computer systems of suppliers into its giant e-marketplaces. Microsoft Corp., which has rejected Java because it has its own competing technology, is a big XML fan.