Why Migrate Your Java Applications to the Cloud Environment?

In the previous article “Successful Cloud Migration Practice You Never Want to Miss” we were discussing about the process of migrating legacy applications to cloud. In this blog, we will discuss about migrating Java applications to cloud and its impact.

Moving Java Applications to the Cloud

With huge benefits that cloud infrastructure promises to business, Java applications are increasingly launched on cloud infrastructure while the existing ones are also being migrated to cloud. This enables the cloud service providers to leverage Java as Platform as a Service (PaaS) in their data centers.  PaaS is cloud based platform that helps companies to develop new software applications and over-write the existing ones. PaaS environments facilitate easy deployment of software applications due to its seamless support for technologies like Java, .Net, Python which allows developers to write code promptly.

There are many advantages to the enterprises by migrating the Java applications to cloud or deploying Java applications as PaaS cloud architecture.

Advantages of Java on the Cloud

The cloud infrastructure typically has something in store for the stakeholders namely—project managers, application developers, architects, deployment masters etc in Java-based solution provider team. When we look into the advantages it presents to the enterprises and for the Java engineers,

Advantages to enterprises:

• Enterprises can replace their legacy applications with the newer, easier integrated cloud applications, even while maintaining their existing business applications and legacy system
• Minimal operational costs and increase in productivity
• Little to no risk of being locked into a long, costly transformation effort

Advantages to Java engineers:

• Enables developers to focus only on innovation that provides real business value instead of infrastructure setup
• It is relatively easy in trouble shooting the applications for the development team with the help of environment snapshots  of trouble times

Will Java Shine on the Cloud?

Many researchers feel that Java will shine on the cloud; SandHill in its recent research study has mentioned that fear of lock-ins will be one of the main inhibitors to the cloud adoption. 

However Java has two key factors for its great impact apart from being a powerful programming language, namely:

1. The WORA
2. The J2EE Specifications

The WORA (Write Once and Run Anywhere or everywhere) is a deployment model that has increased Java’s adoption rate and proliferation across heterogeneous systems. The J2EE specification prevents LOCK-INs with any particular technology or vendor. It does so by providing a single standard enterprise-class platform for building software components that are secured, portable across various platforms, has seamless support and integration capability with various technologies including the latest ones. The common development model established by the contributions of huge developer networks resulted into the creation of new software products and solutions that addressed the end user customer needs.

Java in the Cloud- What’s New?

Java is now set to upgrade with the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 7, which is expected to release in Q3/ Q4 of 2012 and is specially built for the cloud environment. Java EE 7 based applications and products operate more easily on private or public clouds and deliver their functionality as a service. Thus the Java community has taken a right leap in moving towards the cloud.

Today Java is available both at the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS models on the Cloud. Here is a list of the PaaS, IaaS and their service providers for your reference:

List of PaaS Providers

• Amazon Elastic Beanstalk
• VMWare Cloud
• Redhat Shift
• IBM Smartcloud
• Google App Engine for Java 
• VMForce from Force.com
•  Cloudbees
• CumuLogic
• Microsoft Windows Azure
• Orangescape
• AppFog
• Apprenda
• Cloud Foundry
• eXo Cloud IDE
• GigaSpaces Cloudify
• WorkXpress

List of IaaS Providers

• Amazon AWS – IaaS
• Rackspace
• Terremark
• Savvis
• Flexiant
• CloudSigma
• Synaptic
• BlueLock
• Cloudscaling
• Datapipe
• ENKI
• Enomaly
• GoGrid
• HP BladeSystem Matrix
• Joyent
• Logicworks
• netmagic