Actually, it is basically Pivotal versus TypeSafe, not just Spring versus Akka or anything like that.
I put my money on TypeSafe.
Pivotal still (05/2014) doesn't have Java8 support for some of it's frameworks (grails https://jira.grails.org/browse/GRAILS-11063 ). TypeSafe pre-released versions of Play that take full advantage of Java8 features.
Given that if you need to run a Java 1.4.2 app on top of JBoss (or Glassfish!) then the types of technologies that these two companies are pushing are solving problems in a different domain.
And arguably the PermGen change in Java8 would benefit Grails/Groovy the most.
I put my money on TypeSafe.
Pivotal still (05/2014) doesn't have Java8 support for some of it's frameworks (grails https://jira.grails.org/browse/GRAILS-11063 ). TypeSafe pre-released versions of Play that take full advantage of Java8 features.
Given that if you need to run a Java 1.4.2 app on top of JBoss (or Glassfish!) then the types of technologies that these two companies are pushing are solving problems in a different domain.
And arguably the PermGen change in Java8 would benefit Grails/Groovy the most.