IBM Working On Making Enterprise Java Easier

October 21, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Java is important in the enterprise, and getting more important, and IBM wants to help make managing and using Java easier.

At this time last year, there were 26.3 million application developers in the world, and according to CodeNinja, about 20 million of them were reasonably fluent in JavaScript, nearly double the number six years ago. (We are not sure if CodeNinja is counting Node.js as a variant of JavaScript, as it probably should.)

Java, a much older cross-platform language and the lingua franca of business logic in the enterprise, is not as large but is seeing a bit of a resurgence. In 2007, a decade after Java hit the bigtime, it had 6 million developers. In the next decade it grew modestly, kissing 9 million developers, but interestingly, in the past two years another 8 million Java developers have entered the fold.

This is with the rise of Python, which at just over 17 million users has about the same number of users and which is being driven by data analytics and artificial intelligence.

We don’t have a lot of details, but IBM gave a hint of its plans for Java in announcement letter AD24-2185, which is an example of what IBM calls a “statement of direction” and which is a way that IBM reveals that it is working on something that customers have asked it to do.

To be specific, IBM says:

“IBM intends to introduce a fully managed application delivery experience that will be offered as a service. The offering, IBM Enterprise Application Service for Java, is intended to include support for developing, building, testing, and deployment of HA based enterprise Java applications. The offering is also expected to include access to tools that help move workloads from on-premises to a cloud environment by facilitating the identification, evaluation, update, and migration of applications including their database and messaging dependencies. The service is expected to provide an end-to-end managed experience that will include security and compliance features. Enterprise Application Service for Java is intended to help clients shift their focus and resources to higher value initiatives instead of maintaining and managing on-prem application infrastructure.”

We poked around the Internet a bit and found this briefing description of Enterprise Application Service for Java, which was embedded in the session guide for TechXchange 2024:

“Future-proof your existing Java applications. New product: Enterprise Application Service for Java lets you focus on code while we manage your development and operations environment. (website)”

Let’s pick this apart for a minute. Java is a pain in the neck to keep patched and secured, and it would be nice, as the SOD above suggests, to have it also be highly available. Imagine if you could own or rent a service and Big Blue managed the Java virtual machines, runtimes, and compilers for your Java applications. It would be nice if this were tuned for your Java workloads, too, but it doesn’t say that. However, IBM does suggest that it will do an HA implementation of Java as part of this service. (We frankly don’t even know how you cluster and failover Java independently, perhaps, from deploying it in virtual machines or Kubernetes containers based on Linux.

We look forward finding out more about Enterprise Application Service for Java and we, like several business partners who saw this same announcement and reached out to us about it, hope that there is a native IBM i variant of it and not just a Linux LPAR running a Java stack.

Enterprise Application Service for Java is expected to be available in Q2 2025.

In a separate SOD, IBM also said that it was extending WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment (WAS ND). The preview comments, in announcement letter AD24-2206, say:

“IBM intends to introduce a new capability that complements and extends existing IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment (WAS ND) based application estates. The offering is expected to provide existing WAS ND clients a path forward to new application development while preserving existing enterprise operations and practices. It is intended that existing WAS ND users will be able to run Java SE 8 and Java SE 17 applications using their existing operational model based on wsadmin scripts, admin console, and JMX. The offering is also intended to support Jakarta EE 10 applications (using Liberty technologies) operating with Java SE 17 on IBM Semeru Runtimes Certified Edition and other Java based runtimes. Furthermore, it is intended that Spring Framework 6 applications will be compatible with this new capability. The offering is expected to include modernization and migration tools to support applications transitions and improvements for their existing estate.”

WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment is also planned to be available some time in the second quarter of 2025.

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