Groovy/Grails has continued to gain momentum in recent months. Grails co-founder Steven Devijver recently took a look at the Java web framework space and the case for Grails in the Enterprise. In summary Steven makes the following points: Companies have a large number of projects in Struts along with a large number of developers being available with Struts experience. This creates a market for Struts but doesn't mean it is the right framework for a project in 2007.
...the reason why companies are using Struts today is because they are conservative about the alternatives. Changing development standards costs money in training and the time it takes to become experienced with new tools...In other words, they can’t get a competitive advantage by switching to another Java web framework. In the companies I’ve visisted that are using Struts developers would be very happy to switch to Spring MVC. But their companies don’t because their developers are very efficient in building their web applications with Struts, it just works...
He then continues by suggesting that developers don't try to sell management on Grails but instead to sell them on Ajax and web services. Grails then becomes a logical option to use for such applications.
Comments on Steven's position seem mixed however. As one developer points out:
After playing around with Grails for a few weeks, my conclusion is that it is not ready for prime time yet. I say this not to be critical, but to warn you that if you keep beating the drum that enterprise users should switch from Struts or whatever else they are using to Grails, you will get what you ask for. And what I think will happen is many of those early adopters that try the switch will be frustrated due to the bug and changing feature they will run into...Also, I think one thing you are going to run up against is that Struts 2 solves many of the pain points of Struts. I would assume many enterprises would rather upgrade to a newer version of Struts than switch frameworks altogether...