PaaS platforms are scrambling to spread their usefulness. For some, the answer is to add support for more languages. For others, it's about adding a database layer that's easier to develop with, or just easier to manage and replicate. And even yet still for some it's about taking your builds, and putting them in the cloud.

Time will tell which of these pans out. But the month of September will, without a doubt, play host to a multitude of announcements to these ends for all of the Platform as a Service hopefuls.

The most intriguing of these announcements, today, was Heroku's beta support for Java. The original PaaS players, Heroku's purchase by Salesforce.com is looking more and more promising every day. If their Java support can prove to be just as solid and simple as their Ruby support has been, Salesforce.com could end up in a much better position for hosting code not written there.

This week, Dreamforce kicks off in San Francisco, and VMworld in Las Vegas. Soon after will be Oracle's annual OpenWorld conference. Then Intel gets in on the fun with it's own Developer event.

You may ask, "but how does Intel play in PaaS?" To which I respond: "by investing in Joyent." It oddly places Intel in the JavaScript camp, which is quite distant from the level at which they typically play with developers.

The battle for PaaS Supremacy will be lengthy, and at the end of the rainbow will be a few acquisitions. But I think things are a tad crowded right now, and the cool news we're seeing today will require a bit of time to sort out just what the real dangers and perils are in PaaS. In reality, what we need from all of the application hosting providers is a race to neutrality, and away from lock-in. I'd be willing to bet the PaaS firms that make it easiest to leave could, paradoxically, be the biggest winners in the end.