Microsoft’s Azure Functions adds support for Java

Azure Functions, Microsoft’s platform for building serverless applications, has long supported a variety of programming languages but it’s adding an important one today: Java. Fittingly, the company made this announcement at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.

As Microsoft notes in today’s announcement, Java support was one of the top feature requests for Azure Functions since it launched. This is the first time Microsoft is adding support for a new language in Azure Functions, too. Until now, the service only supported JavaScript, C#, F#, Python, PHP, Bash, Batch and PowerShell. It’s not so much that Java allows programmers to do anything that these other languages don’t, but given its reach in the enterprise — a market that Microsoft is clearly targeting with Azure Functions — not having support for it meant that a large number of developers were essentially shut out of using it.

Microsoft stresses that Java developers won’t have to learn any new tools to use Azure Functions. Microsoft is also making a Maven plugin available that will allow developers to write and deploy their Maven-enabled apps directly to Azure Functions.