Progress announced the early-access release of Progress® MarkLogic® Server 12.
Azul's State of Java Survey and Report 2023 uncovered several attention-getting results.
Here are our top five takeaways.
1. Java Is Thriving
Survey responders answered a qualifying question to determine whether they could proceed with the survey. Namely, did their organizations use Java for their applications or services? Only 2% were disqualified from taking the survey, meaning 98% use Java, with 57% saying it is the backbone of most of their application and infrastructure estate.
While new languages like Rust, Typescript and Go evolve and gain market share, Java continues to evolve too, and it has remained one of the most popular languages thanks to some critical features:
■ Java is defined collaboratively through the Java Community Process (JCP) and developed under the open-source OpenJDK project.
■ It's updated every six months, and a version is introduced every two years with long-term support.
■ Java-based applications that run on new versions of Java can usually run on older versions, too.
■ Developers need to write only a single code base to execute their program on any operating system and hardware.
Java remains one of the most in-demand coding languages today, and it continues to move into new areas, such as AI.
2. Java Users Are Concerned About Oracle Java SE Pricing
The survey confirms frustration over Oracle Java pricing, as 82% of respondents stated they are concerned about Oracle's fourth major pricing and licensing change in four years.
Looking more closely, 49% of participants are either very concerned or extremely concerned, and only 11% are not at all concerned.
Another factor is whether the pricing change is hitting companies financially. Overall, 66% choose to pay for support. Those who are not concerned are generally not paying for Java support.
■ Among those who do pay for support, 63% are extremely or very concerned, and only 5% are not at all concerned.
■ Of those who don't pay for support, 23% are extremely or very concerned, while 25% are not at all concerned.
3. Users Are Looking at Alternative Java Providers
Java users are going beyond idle chatter, social media posts and blog posts and are taking action. In fact, 72% are actively considering alternatives to Oracle Java SE.
As the percentage of companies using Oracle's JDK drops — from more than 70% in 2020, according to other studies, to 42% in the report — other distributions are growing. In other words, if you're not happy with your current Java SE or OpenJDK provider, you have options.
4. OpenJDK Distributions Give Organizations Choices
The percentage of companies using Oracle Java SE had been dropping already. While 42% of respondents use Oracle Java, very few use Oracle Java exclusively. Only 10% use only Oracle Java, while 32% use Oracle plus another distribution, and 58% don't use Oracle Java at all.
As fewer organizations use Oracle Java, more of them use OpenJDK distributions. In the survey, seven non-Oracle distributions are used by at least 10% of responders (in a multi-select question).
5. Migration Causes Unrealistic Angst
What's preventing organizations from changing Java providers in even greater numbers? Many have an outsized idea of how arduous a migration really is.
In another multi-select question, more than half (52%) say a migration is too much effort (26%), they couldn't find a migration partner (12%), they lack the expertise for other Java distributions (18%), or it never occurred to them that they could change providers (14%).
Migrating to certified builds of OpenJDK can be very straightforward and simple for the vast majority of enterprises. Companies migrating server applications are not likely to encounter any challenges.
Frustration over Oracle's latest Java pricing changes opens opportunities for organizations looking to save on licensing costs and have a better relationship with their Java providers. Options are available for companies looking to make a change. If they do their due diligence and are as prepared as possible when they start, most Java migrations are relatively painless.
Methodology: The report was conducted independently with more than 2,000 Java users of all seniority levels from six continents in May and June 2023.
Industry News
Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) AI across the hybrid cloud.
Jitterbit announced its unified AI-infused, low-code Harmony platform.
Akuity announced the launch of KubeVision, a feature within the Akuity Platform.
Couchbase announced Capella Free Tier, a free developer environment designed to empower developers to evaluate and explore products and test new features without time constraints.
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced the general availability of AWS Parallel Computing Service, a new managed service that helps customers easily set up and manage high performance computing (HPC) clusters so they can run scientific and engineering workloads at virtually any scale on AWS.
Dell Technologies and Red Hat are bringing Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI), a foundation model platform built on an AI-optimized operating system that enables users to more seamlessly develop, test and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (gen AI) models, to Dell PowerEdge servers.
Couchbase announced that Couchbase Mobile is generally available with vector search, which makes it possible for customers to offer similarity and hybrid search in their applications on mobile and at the edge.
Seekr announced the launch of SeekrFlow as a complete end-to-end AI platform for training, validating, deploying, and scaling trusted enterprise AI applications through an intuitive and simple to use web user interface (UI).
Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. unveiled its innovative Portal designed for both managed security service providers (MSSPs) and distributors.
Couchbase officially launched Capella™ Columnar on AWS, which helps organizations streamline the development of adaptive applications by enabling real-time data analysis alongside operational workloads within a single database platform.
Mend.io unveiled the Mend AppSec Platform, a solution designed to help businesses transform application security programs into proactive programs that reduce application risk.
Elastic announced that it is adding the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL) as an option for users to license the free part of the Elasticsearch and Kibana source code that is available under Server Side Public License 1.0 (SSPL 1.0) and Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2).
Progress announced the latest release of Progress® Semaphore™, its metadata management and semantic AI platform.
Elastic, the Search AI Company, announced the Elasticsearch Open Inference API now integrates with Anthropic, providing developers with seamless access to Anthropic’s Claude, including Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3 Opus, directly from their Anthropic account.