Oracle celebrates 20 years of Java

Oracle users and the development community worldwide are celebrating 20 years of Java. Today, Java serves as the critical backbone of software that touches both our work and personal lives. From innovations in enterprise big data, cloud, social, mobile and the Internet of Things, to connected cars, smartphones and video games, Java continues to help developers push the boundaries in technology innovation.

“Java has grown and evolved to become one of the most important and dependable technologies in our industry today. Those who have chosen Java have been rewarded many times over with increases in performance, scalability, reliability, compatibility, and functionality,” said Georges Saab, vice president of development, Java Platform Group at Oracle.

“The Java ecosystem offers outstanding libraries, frameworks, and resources to help programmers from novice to expert alike. The development of Java itself occurs in the transparent OpenJDK community. With the considerable investment from Oracle and others in the community, we look forward to the next 20 years of Java’s evolution and growth", he added.

"IBM is celebrating Java's 20th anniversary as one of the most important industry led programming platforms spanning mobile, client and enterprise software platforms. IBM began its commitment to Java at its inception over two decades ago, and has seen the Java ecosystem and developer community bring unsurpassed value to the investments our clients have made in their Java based solutions,” said Harish Grama, vice president, Middleware Products, IBM Systems. “IBM looks forward to the next 20 years of growth and innovation in the Java ecosystem including Mobile, Cloud, Analytics and Internet of Things", Grama added

Introduced in 1995, Java is the programming language of choice for 9 million developers and today powers 7 billion devices. Improving road and air safety, collecting information from the world’s oceans for science applications, increasing grain crop quality and quantifying to help feed the hungry, simulating the human brain and musculoskeletal system, and gaming are some of the intriguing projects worldwide that use the Java technology.

Enterprise developers can choose from an ecosystem of 30 Java EE 6 and Java EE 7 compatible implementations from 12 vendors. Additionally, more than 125 million Java-based media devices have been deployed and over 10 billion Java Cards have been shipped since Java’s introduction.

Under the stewardship of Oracle, two major platform releases including Java 7 and Java 8 have been delivered, with Java 9 slated for 2016. The Java Community Process (JCP) is more open and transparent than ever before, and serves as an integral element of community participation in the ongoing evolution of the technology. The OpenJDK Community, the place to collaborate on an open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition, is continuously attracting new contributors to its already broad base of participation.