Java's Future in the Cloud

03/07/23 • 17 min

Since the 1990s, Java has become one of the most popular programming languages and an established technology for enterprise development. However, despite this history and the role it played in the beginning of the Internet, Java is not always seen as an instrumental technology in the cloud.

For our latest podcast episode, Bola Rotibi, Chief of Enterprise Research at CCS Insight, talks to Ian Robinson, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technology Officer of the IBM Application Platform. Ian has more than 25 years of experience working in distributed enterprise computing and is responsible for the technical strategy of IBM Application Platform technologies including WebSphere, Liberty and Java. Clive Howard, Chief Technology Officer at Huozhi, a provider of a humanitarian fintech platform, and associate analyst with CCS Insight, also joined the podcast discussion.

Our discussion touched on the importance of Java in the early days of the Internet and how this may translate to its place in the cloud, looking at some of the initiatives that IBM has put together to make the coding language relevant for cloud operations.

The podcast also offers listeners strategic guidance on the topic, such as:

How to harness existing software development teams with specific skills and experience using Java in the transition to the cloud.
Finding opportunities to innovate and overcome the challenges facing Java's future in the cloud, such as taking advantage of the cloud to optimize existing workloads in Java.
The importance of these initiatives to leading technical roles from a business perspective, for example, reusing existing skills, teams and technologies to make the cloud more efficient and cheaper.

The podcast also offers listeners strategic guidance on the topic, such as:

How to harness existing software development teams with specific skills and experience using Java in the transition to the cloud.
Finding opportunities to innovate and overcome the challenges facing Java's future in the cloud, such as taking advantage of the cloud to optimize existing workloads in Java.
The importance of these initiatives to leading technical roles from a business perspective, for example, reusing existing skills, teams and technologies to make the cloud more efficient and cheaper.

Previous Episode

Multicloud Complexity to Multicloud Coherency

In this episode of the CCS Insight podcast, James Sanders, Principal Analyst of Cloud and Infrastructure at CCS Insight, is joined by VMware's Amanda Blevins, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Americas, and Richard Munro from the Office of the CTO for Strategy and Operations. Clive Howard, CTO for Huozhi and associate analyst at CCS Insight, also joined the discussion.

Multicloud deployments have become increasingly common in the past few years, with our Senior Leadership IT Investment Survey, 2022 finding that three-quarters of enterprises are using more than one cloud provider, up from 55% in our 2021 survey. Whether this be an intentional move or the product of acquisitions, mergers or trials, organizations can experience challenges in managing and securing their workloads correctly.

The discussion unpacks the main challenges that organizations face in supporting a multicloud architecture, touching on problems with training and hiring talent for specific technology services and business plans. The experts also highlight the correct organizational and operational approaches to delivering a multicloud strategy and how it can be implemented successfully, reviewing existing cloud services and providing internal customers with flexibility while maintaining control.

The podcast offers strategic guidance for a range of difficulties faced in a multicloud environment, including:

Combining the benefits of a single multicloud service offering with those of individual proprietary cloud services
Exercising spending control through areas like cloud financial operations and compliance with security, quotas and business policies
Reducing complexity in multicloud environments by determining if a best-of-breed service is necessary to solve business challenges.

Next Episode

Are Portable Containers Destroying Standards?

Containers can be a vital tool in the development of operations teams, allowing developers to build up skills in a technology that isn't specific to a particular type or workload, and to become more responsible for the life cycle of their applications. These portable containers can help organizations as they transition to the cloud by making workloads accessible across different technologies. However, the solution is still evolving, and some question if portable containers are destroying standards.

For this episode of the CCS Insight podcast, our chief of enterprise research, Bola Rotibi, was joined by IBM's Emily Jiang, Liberty Cloud Native Architect and Advocate, and Graham Charters, WebSphere and Liberty product manager. We also spoke to Clive Howard, chief technology officer at Huozhi, a provider of a humanitarian fintech platform. Clive is also an associate analyst at CCS Insight.

Our discussion unpacked the importance of containers in modern app development and how challenges are being addressed to help organizations make the move into the cloud. We also highlighted the role of APIs, and how they can serve to bring in other solutions and use other environments when containers aren't an applicable solution.

The podcast offers guidance on the needs of modern application development, discussing:

How the industry is addressing API standards to increase developers' efficiency and allow them to reuse their skills.

What value these standards present to businesses, and how technical leads can present this to their business counterparts thinking about investing in containers and APIs.

How developers can use open standards to apply existing skills to different implementations, achieving standardization, consistency and portability across the board.

CCS Insight has produced a free report offering insight into how containers are affecting the standards landscape.