2nd thoughts...

As the recently appointed CEO for LegacyJ -- the 10-year "new" name for Synkronix -- I have a variety of facts that may be of value to you, our readers, whether customers, prospects or whatever researcher.

Our architect, Brian Sullivan, took the bold step in 1995 to conclude that the object-oriented profile of Sun's new Java language -- and Sun's backing -- would create the environment needed to move old COBOL applications "seamlessly"... All you had to do was create a translation engine significantly in advance of the introduction of J2EE, most of JVM, most of why you could verify that this was, indeed, an outstanding selection -- not a wild-eyed graduate degree programmer's mistake...

Still, it was 5+ years before Java was close to becoming the standard it is today, needing the release and the beginnings of the acceptance of the J2EE standard in the enterprise before this became a real business...