Taking Java to OCI

I first started working with Java some time in 1997, which is quite a scary thought in some ways.  In other ways though, it’s quite a comforting thought – the language that I learned then is going strong and continues to grow and evolve.

Today Java is the most widely used software development language and platform in the world.

Since the late 90s, both Java and the world have been through some pretty profound changes.  In terms of IT, one of the most obvious is the rise of cloud.

When we think about the cloud and Java, according to a 2021 VDC study:

• Java is viewed as the most important language for cloud.
• Java is the #1 language developers expect to be using in three years time.
• In 2020 there were 56 billion active JVMs worldwide, 60.5% of them in the cloud.  By 2025, there are predicted to be 82 billion, with 74.2% in the cloud.

So, Java’s footprint in the cloud is big and expanding, and developers are betting on Java to keep themselves relevant and employable.

When we look at Oracle’s cloud, OCI, we see that Java is by far the most popular SDK used by developers.

When developers choose to use Java in OCI they get all the benefits of a Java SE Subscription at no additional cost.  This means they can unlock additional value and benefits for themselves and their businesses.

One of these is the Java Management Service.  This helps DevOps teams and administrators understand what Java workloads they have deployed, which JDK version and the origin of the JDK.

If they are using the Oracle JDK they can get additional insight into the security state (whether it needs patching) and the applications that are running on top of it.

Oracle is the steward and #1 contributor to Java and the OpenJDK project.

However, many organisations want more than just the Java binaries that they get with OpenJDK.  They are looking for security, patching, support and expert advice on upgrades and application performance.

They may want the flexibility to carry on running existing applications on older versions of Java, so they can upgrade at their own pace or focus development resources on building new applications rather than upgrading old ones.

They may want to enhance the performance of their applications by running them using the latest versions of Java or GraalVM Enterprise.

For on premises customers, these benefits are available through the Java SE subscription.

For OCI customers they are included OOTB.

So you can migrate existing applications to OCI, or develop new ones on OCI and take advantage of these benefits.

As both a cloud provider and the steward and leading contributor to Java, Oracle is uniquely placed to deliver an optimised Java cloud platform and experience.

I’ve witnessed at first hand some of the joint engineering efforts and I think it’s tremendously exciting.

With the new possibilities that Java and GraalVM provide to developers such as the management service, performance benefits, support for older versions of Java and expert advice from the creators of Java, OCI really is the best cloud for your Java workloads.

If you are interested in building and deploying your Java application on OCI, you can start from this introductory hands-on content repository, including architecture best practice for: microservices-based RESTfull applications; modern web and mobile applications; serverless applications; and an introduction to GraalVM.

When you are ready to start testing Java on OCI, you can access the advanced hands-on content repository, including deployment automation code to set up some of the most popular architectures in a Free Trial Oracle Cloud account (e.g. an Apache Tomcat server connected to MySQL Database Service; a CI/CD pipeline for cloud deployments by using GitHub; microservices with a converged database).

If you need any help with the technical resources in the content repository, feel free to reach out to us via our public slack workspace dedicated to developers – and post your questions to the Java channel.