News

Red Hat Advances Java on Kubernetes with Quarkus

• By John K. Waters
• May 28, 2020

Red Hat announced that its Quarkus Kubernetes-native Java framework is now fully supported in Red Hat Runtimes. The move advances Java on Kubernetes, the IBM subsidiary said in a statement, "bridging the gap between traditional Java applications and cloud-native environments."

Red Hat Runtimes is a set of products, tools, and components for developing and maintaining cloud-native applications. It provides lightweight runtimes and frameworks aimed at highly distributed cloud architectures, such as microservices, containers and serverless.

Quarkus, which Red Hat launched last year, is a lightweight, high-performance framework designed to reduce the footprint and latency of Java apps, specifically for cloud-native architectures. It’s tailored for the GraalVM and HotSpot JVMs, and combines support for the imperative programming model with support for cloud-native, event-driven, asynchronous and reactive models in the same platform. Red Hat released Quarkus 1.3 in March of this year.

"Quarkus delivers a bevy of benefits for Java applications, such as faster start-up time, reduced memory consumption, optimization for serverless, and enhanced developer productivity," said IDC analyst Arnal Dayaratna, in a statement. "As a result, Java developers can write and develop in the language they know and love, while taking advantage of the ability of Quarkus to bring cost, operational and productivity benefits to cloud-native and Kubernetes-based development."

Adding Quarkus as a supported runtime helps to bring Java into the modern, cloud-native application development landscape, the company stated—to things like microservices, containers, and serverless, through which organizations are pushing the envelope on productivity, efficiency, agility, and scale.

"Bringing Java into the modern, cloud-native application landscape we are in today is crucial, not just for the future of the programming language, but for the future of the thousands of businesses that rely on Java," said Rich Sharples, Red Hat’s senior director of cloud services.

With Quarkus, users are getting a fully Red Hat supported technology, the company stated, which includes an active community, continuous updates, and a fast release cadence. The framework includes an extension library that incorporates an ecosystem of more than 200 extensions standards, libraries, services, and technologies. The library includes a range of cloud-native frameworks and tools, such as RESTEasy, Hibernate, and Eclipse MicroProfile, among others. It also includes extensions for several Red Hat cloud services, such as Red Hat AMQ Streams, Red Hat AMQ Broker, and Red Hat Fuse.