Managed service providers can gain insight into the rate at which production applications are moving into the cloud from a survey of 1,800 developers published today by The Eclipse Foundation. The survey finds that half the respondents are running less than 20 percent of their Java workloads in the cloud today.
Only 15 percent are running more than 40 percent of their Java workloads in the cloud. The survey finds nearly a quarter (23 percent) expect to have more than 80 percent of their Java workloads running in the cloud in two years. Another 11 percent expect 60 percent to 80 percent of their Java workloads to be running in the cloud in that timeframe, while 13 percent pegged the number at 40 to 60 percent.
From Java to Jakarta
Much of that rapid shift will be fueled by a cloud-native implementation of Jakarta EE platform being developed under the auspices of The Eclipse Foundation, which has formally taken over stewardship of Java from Oracle. Everything developed under a Java license before now will continue to be known as Java. Going forward, everything developed under the leadership of the Eclipse Foundation will be known as Jakarta.
The Eclipse Foundation has promised to speed up the rate at which new innovations are injected into the Jakarta community. Previous iterations of Java were all developed primarily by Oracle employees. Contributors to the Jakarta EE working group are Fujitsu, IBM, Oracle, Payara, Red Hat, and Tomitribe, along with SAP and Microsoft, which announced joining of the effort today.
The survey suggests that as organizations look to migrate monolithic Java applications to the cloud many of them will be reconstituted into a series of microservices to one degree or another. Nearly half of respondents (46 percent) are currently or planning on building microservices. Another 21 percent said they will begin building microservices in the coming year. A full 98 percent said they will employ Java and its successors to build those microservices. More than half (51 percent) indicated Docker containers would also play a significant microservices role, and 57 percent cited native integration with Kubernetes as an important capability if it becomes available.
Impact on MSPs
The rate at which Java applications migrate to the cloud is significant for MSPs because it suggests a significant base of the most mission-critical enterprise applications running on-premises are about to migrate. That obviously creates a significant migration services opportunity for MSPs. But, MSPs that also resell on-premises IT infrastructure might want to factor in a smaller total available market for on-premises infrastructure in about three years.
Of course, some Java applications might be written in another language or replaced by a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application. But, the survey makes it clear that the commitment to Java and its Jakarta successors remains strong both outside and inside the cloud. The next issue for MSPs will be keeping track of where all the code surrounding the Jakarta platform ultimately lands given the wide range of public cloud platforms available.
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