Java versus Cloud-Mobile-Social: Are we there yet?

It can get a bit unnerving for some these days, with the eerie silence around the technologies in the enterprise space. All we hear of these days is, Cloud, Mobile and Social Computing (i.e the Social Enterprise) . While it's true that these are exciting and disruptive technologies, we thought we'd take a break and focus on what else is happening out there.

It seems that a lot of innovation is currently focused on these aforementioned areas, and the patent wars are only adding fuel to the competitive fire. Post the acquisition of Sun by Oracle in 2010, there was a certain lag in the progress of the Java technologies. Much had been written about what will the future of Java be, and how Oracle's approach was likely to shape out. If you looked closely, maybe this apprehension also was beginning to seemingly show up in the open source space too. (And, that's not surprising since a lot of open source stuff is also Java-based).

The next release of Java came a good 18-odd months post the acquisition, and developers probably still asked what the future of Java was going to be. This question still remains unanswered to a large extent, and maybe it's the lack of forthcoming news on the Java front (see TechVibes for a comprehensive dashboard of many of the tech news, reflecting the apparent sluggish pace of innovation in the J&OSS space), or the mere fact that the cloud and mobile technologies are just overshadowing Java at the moment.

What is interesting is that this new generation of technologies, all leveraging the Internet as it's core infrastructure, are powered in many cases by non-Java technologies, or atleast different approaches. So, one may like to think that the 'next generation' enterprise or business will be powered more by these but it's hard to say if that's how things will pan out. Oracle - and Java - may have had a bit of a late start in these new, emerging technologies, but they are trying to forge ahead, and clearly so, in the enterprise space.

JavaOne, the premier Java conference, last year (2011) was attended and watched by many in anticipation of whether it throws any light on the future of Java: how it's going to be evolving. While we take this opportunity to step aside from the hype around Cloud-Mobile-Social, it is probably worthwhile to ponder a bit on what the folks are working on, and what's coming up in the near, foreseeable future, even as the conference teams are busy working out the agenda for this year.



In a nutshell, what's coming up on the roadmap:
- JDK 7, for Windows and other OS
- JDK 8 (by 2014)
- NetBeans 7+
- Java EE 7 - Building for the Cloud, and other spec upgrades like JMS 2.0
- JavaFX 2.0/3.0 and
- Java ME...

None of these seem greatly disruptive and probably lack the excitement that the likes of Spring seems to be playing towards (more on this in a later post), and it'd be nice to hear what the larger developer community feels about this roadmap. We'd like to get your comments and views on what do you think 'Java' should/shouldn't focus on, and also, if you agree or disagree with the whole promise of the cloud-mobile-social technology revolution.

As for us, we hope that the pace of innovation picks up, and they find a way to create the robust platforms - engineered for what is no doubt an exciting next generation!