“By tying Jakarta EE to cloud-native and microservices, we have an opportunity to make the technology relevant to today’s cloud-first world”

Jakarta EE has a new website, a new logo, and a brand new future.

The vision for the technical future of Jakarta EE includes the following:

• Enhanced support for microservices architecture
• Move to Cloud Native Java, which includes better integrations with technologies like Docker and Kubernetes
• Increase the pace of innovation
• Build a vibrant developer community
• Provide production quality reference implementations

The Eclipse Foundation expects to see the community working towards better integrations with cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker — some integrations must happen at JVM level. Furthermore, they expect the community to collaborate with the OpenJDK and Eclipse OpenJ9 team to provide support at the framework level as these JVM enhancements are made available.

Under its new governance model, the Jakarta EE platform should evolve at a rapid pace, incorporating Java innovations from open source communities like Eclipse MicroProfile into new versions of the platform to help developers create portable cloud-native applications.

Last but not least, Jakarta EE promises faster release and innovation cycles.

We caught up with Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation at JAX to chat about Jakarta EE’s future and what’s cooking in the Eclipse Foundation kitchen.

Here are some takeaways:

• Running an open-source foundation is not like running a for-profit company. If one project fails, there are 350 other projects. The success or failure of one of the Eclipse Foundation’s projects doesn’t change the mission of being a collaborative place for people and companies to come together and innovate.
• The goal of the Jakarta EE spec process is going to be to enable independent implementations just like the JCP — it’s about creating specifications that are good enough and clear enough that Oracle and IBM and Red Hat and all these companies can independently implement them and certify that their versions are compatible.
• As the enterprise customers are pivoting towards the cloud, the original mission for Java EE of being an on-premise app server is becoming end-of-life. What Oracle is doing with Jakarta EE is a smart move for them from a business perspective but also a great move for Java developers because this allows the Eclipse Foundation to take this technology forward. By tying it to cloud-native and microservices, they have an opportunity to make the technology relevant to today’s cloud-first world.

Read more about Jakarta EE’s cloud-native path and the results of the community survey here. 

Mike Milinkovich has been involved in the software industry for over thirty years, doing everything from software engineering, to product management to IP licensing. He has been the Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation since 2004. In that role, he is responsible for supporting both the Eclipse open-source community and its commercial ecosystem. Prior to joining Eclipse, Mike was a vice president in Oracle’s development group. Other stops along the way include WebGain, The Object People, IBM, Object Technology International (OTI) and Nortel. Mike sits on the Board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), on the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process (JCP), and is an observer and past member of the Board of OpenJDK.