Hello Apache Geode Developer Community, Happy New Year, and thank you to everyone who contributed to the successful Apache Geode 2.0 release. The 2.0 effort was a significant milestone for the project and a clear demonstration of what this community can accomplish through sustained collaboration, technical rigor, and shared ownership. Your work over the past year built on more than a decade of Apache Geode being proven, stable, and production-ready at scale.
As we look ahead to 2026, I would like to share a proposed strategic plan that builds on the momentum of the release 2.0 and continues our focus on security, modernization, and long-term ecosystem health. This plan is intended to guide our technical priorities, investment areas, and community collaboration over the coming year. It is not set in stone, and community input will play an important role in shaping its final form. Strategic Focus Areas for 2026 Our 2026 roadmap is organized around four core themes: -Strengthening Security and Compliance with continuous vulnerability remediation, improved transparency through SBOM generation (GEODE-10481), migration of the legacy Security Manager (GEODE-10531), and closer alignment with modern Java security standards. -Modernizing Build and Runtime through completion of the Gradle migration to 9 with improved performance and compatibility, CI/CD pipeline upgrades (GEODE-10539), and migration to Java 21 for long-term support, performance, and security. -API Stability and Cleanup by removing obsolete versions to reduce technical debt and risk, modernizing GFSH and support module APIs, and providing a clear, well-documented migration path. -Adoption and Ecosystem Readiness by delivering a modern, upstream-aligned release that continues to meet enterprise expectations, improves onboarding, and strengthens Geode’s position across downstream consumers. Key Modernization Initiatives In addition to Java 21, I plan to drive the migration to the latest Spring Framework version with a focus on improved security posture, advanced framework capabilities, and documented best practices for migration. Build and runtime changes will follow a phased rollout strategy supported by community engagement, testing, and real-world validation. Operationally, we will continue improving the project’s presentation and accessibility through website modernization (GEODE-10468), enhanced documentation and tutorials, and a refreshed GitHub README (GEODE-10497) to improve the onboarding experience for new contributors and users alike. Adoption, Compliance, and Strategic Value A central goal of the 2026 plan is to ensure Apache Geode continues to set the bar for secure, reliable, and scalable distributed data management. SBOM integration into CI/CD, improved release quality, and infrastructure modernization are intended to strengthen trust, simplify adoption, and reinforce Geode’s leadership within the broader open-source data ecosystem. I encourage everyone in the community to participate in these efforts in whatever capacity makes sense, whether that is contributing code, reviewing pull requests, improving documentation, testing releases, sharing feedback, or simply joining the discussion. Contributions both small and large are equally valued and essential to the success of this plan. Feedback, alternative ideas, and course corrections are welcome and appreciated. I look forward to your input, collaboration, and continued engagement as we refine and execute on the 2026 roadmap together. Thank you again for your outstanding work on the 2.0 release. I wish you and your families a healthy, successful, and fulfilling year ahead. Best regards, Jinwoo Hwang (he/him/his) SAS® Research and Development http://JinwooHwang.com<http://jinwoohwang.com/>
