Well, I'm not for or against Java or any other language. I agree that there can certainly be "bad" choices for specific problems, but it's absurd to think that Java specifically (or COBOL) is some kind of scalability magic bullet.
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It's been a while since I worked with PHP, but when looking at performance or distributing work I can appreciate the desire to migrate to a different language. I've always seen PHP as more of an over-ambitious template language (even though smarty and so on exist to perform this function on top of PHP). Basically I'm not surprised by your story.
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The interesting point in this for me was the idea that Java, or any other development platform with an "enterprise" sticker slapped on it, will be the obvious choice for a given problem space simply because it has the sticker.
I've been in the situation several times where technology decisions are made based on brand. The Java solution is the only one evaluated "just because".